Children: dehumanized or not yet fully human?

ElsevierVolume 51, June 2023, 101276Current Opinion in Behavioral SciencesAuthor links open overlay panelHighlights•

Whether children are dehumanized by adults goes beyond an empirical question.

Some conceptions of ‘what it is to be human’ deny children full humanness.

Seeing children as human becomings puts them at risk of being dehumanized.

The existentialist view that existence precedes essence protects everyone’s humanness.

Dehumanization and infantilization of adult social categories may be closely related.

Is perceiving children as not yet fully human a manifestation of dehumanization or a mere reflection that children lack the features commonly considered distinctly human? In this paper, I discuss how seeing children as human becomings or human beings ties in with different perspectives on ‘what it is to be human’, drawn from the natural sciences, philosophy, and social sciences. In so doing, I highlight the benefits of endorsing an existentialist position where the existence of a human being predates their essence, which is created by their actions in the world. Both children and adults are human beings and human becomings. Moreover, I propose that these perspectives have implications for the dehumanization of other social categories.

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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