Why Children Believe They Are Owned

Abstract

Owners decide what happens to their property, and so adults typically view autonomous beings as non-owned. If children likewise consider autonomy when judging what is owned, this may have implications for how they view themselves. If children believe that parents have power over them, that they themselves lack autonomy, and that only the autonomous cannot be owned, this may lead them to believe that they are owned by their parents. Across three experiments, we found that 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 206) consistently affirm that children are owned by their parents. In Experiment 1, children judged that children and domesticated animals are owned, but denied this for adults and wild animals. In Experiment 2, children were more likely to see children as owned by their parents than by their teachers, and also denied that children own either kind of adult. Finally, in Experiment 3, children were less likely to view a child who makes decisions against parental authority as owned. These judgments are unlikely to mirror what children have been told. Instead, they likely result from children spontaneously using autonomy principles, and possibly other principles of ownership, in reasoning about the ownership of living entities.