Project information
Year
2024
Industry
Ethnography & Research
Services
Editorial Design
Ethnography
Design Research
Legacy and Queerness
To My Future, Non-Existent Children is an investigative and self-ethnographic publication dealing with the theme of family legacy through a queer perspective, asking the reader what it is that we are leaving for future generations. Born out of the observation that there is an ever-growing percentage of the population that identifies as LGBT+ and that this will inevitably lead to new models of the family unit, this project poses the question of whether I, a homosexual Mexican man, will ever even be able to have children: Be it because of political, social, financial, personal or even ecological reasons.
This publication deals with these respective matters, all addressed to my non-existent child, an elusive, ever out-of-reach and mysterious figure, as I grapple with the cultural impetus in Mexico that encourages child-rearing as the ultimate accomplishment, contrasting with my ambivalent feelings towards the subject. Child rearing is a deeply personal matter, but it is my intent that this publication serve as a reference point and conversation starter for queer individuals to explore their relationship to legacy and the family unit.
To My Future, Non-Existent Children aims to serve as a medium and platform for the oftentimes overlooked topic of LGBT family to come to the light, and grapple with the complex and thorny issues that come with it. The impact of climate change on the quality of life of our future generations (Soloski, 2024), the ethics of surrogacy (García, 2023), the stigma of adoption (Culhane, 2017); these are all tough questions that straight couples might get to ignore, but all queer parents have to deal with this moral maelstrom. Ultimately, “we’ll all have to account for how well we parent our children—no matter their origin, and no matter what we think about the various ways we create our families” (Culhane, 2017), and this will determine the quality of our future for generations to come.
I invite the reader to interact with this publication with open-minded inquiry, curiosity and open-mindedness. Regardless if you want to have children or not (a topic which I myself do not know, and thankfully have much time to think about!), the question of whether we are creating the world we want future generations to enjoy is an important one. What would you like for the next generation to understand about 2024? What will be gone? What will remain?
Cristobal touches on the very real and hardly discussed topic of family in the Queer community. I found his investigations into the topic extremely powerful as it breaks down the very idea of family. Many of us have been rejected by our families in one way or another, go through the atypical process of selecting our own chosen family, and also have to deal with the legal and political barriers to having children of our own. My favourite part of the publication was the letters written by queer people to ‘their future, non-existent children’ — people leaving behind the love for children that they always had and will have even when those children may never exist.
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