General
the children
What does the children mean?
In ballroom, a house isn't a building, it's a family. The mother and father at the top, and beneath them, the children: the younger members they take in, train, dress, school in the categories, and send out to walk. The children are siblings to each other, brothers and sisters in the same house, and the lineage runs deeper than that, into aunts and grandparents. For Black and Latino LGBTQ kids cast out by their birth families, this was the family that actually showed up. Not a metaphor. A real chosen family with real roles.
"Mother brought three of the children to the ball to walk their first category."
Origin
Harlem ball culture of the 1970s-80s, where house mothers and fathers built chosen-family structures for LGBTQ youth, especially Black and Latino, often rejected by biological kin. Documented in Paris Is Burning (1990).
Frequently asked questions
What does "the children" mean in ballroom culture?
It refers to the junior members of a ballroom house — the younger people raised and mentored by the house's mother and father.
How do you use "the children" in a sentence?
"The mother of the house always makes sure the children are ready before they walk a ball."
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