Questions around the ownership of genetic information also relate to perceptions of autonomy and hierarchy within the family. A family as a group is made of individuals that are often not viewed or treated as equals. Perceptions of ownership are legally and culturally accepted within the traditional family structure.
What is the status of children? Do children “belong” to their parents? And if so, what does this ownership entails? Before adulthood, parents legally own their children’s genetic and medical information, however could parents claim to eternally own their child because they have produced it? Could parents claim ownership of their duplicated genes on the grounds that they own the “original” copy? Since we are all duplicates and nobody can biologically have a source-less genetic makeup, is there even such a thing as genetic autonomy?
The role and autonomy of children varies between cultures and families, Michael Grossberg writes that the English common law tradition regarded children as “assets of paternal estate on which fathers had vested interests. As dependants, sub-ordinate beings, their services, earnings, and the like became the property of their paternal masters in exchange for life and maintenance” (Governing The Heart 1985)
The life long relationship between parent and child is treated there more as a commercial exchange, in which the child is forever in debt for being given life. The child is born as the property of the parent, and the parent determines their lives according to the financial needs of the family. Therefore in adulthood the ownership of a woman was being transferred from the father to the groom. In cultures that still consider a woman to be the husband’s property, would that make him the owner of her genetic information?
There are always parallels between traditional family structures and commerce as historically families were born out of financial deals. Marriage as the institutionalising of human relationships was more or less a business agreement between two families. As such, concepts of ownership, property and autonomy are very much a part of family relationships.
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