How Do We Define Home?

The other day I was thinking about the idea of property and how it pertains to my life. What do I own, and what does the typical college student own? During my moment of pensiveness, the song Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros came on my IPod. This prompted me to think about the idea of home; is the house that my parents live in still my property, still my home? Was it ever my property to begin with? And, when do I become a visitor in my parent’s house? We all know it happens to everyone as they move towards adulthood. In the movie Garden State the main character, Andrew, addresses this mysterious transition. Andrew suggests that this loss of property, loss of home, is a “right of passage.” As college students we are in a time of transition where the definition of property in the context of our home becomes very vague as we start to approach this right of passage.

Professor LaVaque-Manty defines property as a claim against other people about a right to the continued use, possession, and disposal of some object, whether such object is currently in the possession of or in use by the owner or not. This definition allows us, as college students, to still claim our parent’s house as our property, since we have the right to continually use the house…well really just the washer and dryer. But when does this claim against other people, being mainly our parents, run out? Is it when, heaven forbid, our parents turn our childhood bedroom into a guest room? Or when we start to pay for our own living space with our own money? 

That's how I feel when I think about that possibility.

What is even scarier to think about is the right to our “home” in the context of how Locke views the prerogative to one’s property. Locke asserts that if one puts labor (work) into something, that he or she therefore has the right to own it; it becomes his or her property. If we apply this theory to the typical modern day household, the right to its ownership is as follows: Dad and Mom have the right to the house because they work and therefore earn money to pay for the house, which transitively implies the work they put into the house. Additionally, they both do their respective chores around the house, actually known as putting labor into the house.

In analyzing Lockes definition of property, I realized that there is an problem with claiming ownership over my home in the first place. Legally, I have no ownership of my house; I never paid for it, or signed a mortgage. Yet, I still have a very strong moral claim over my house. The fundamental nature of growing up in a household creates this sense of ownership over my childhood home. My parents constantly referred to my childhood house as "our home," implying that I too had ownership of the house. More importantly, there is an intrinsic logical understanding that I too own my childhood house. The logic behind my claim yields to Professor LaVaque-Manty's definition of property; I continually used my house and therefore I have ownership over it. Clearly, there is an inherent disparity in claiming ownership over my childhood home. It questions the validity of the legal definition of property versus the validity of the moral implications of ownership. It's curious that most parents seem to regard their house as our own without question. They present an authorization of ownership over our childhood house. It seems that having a child automatically imbues a moral obligation on parents to allocate ownership of the house, among other things, to their child. Therefore, filial relationships create exceptions to the rules of property. This makes me wonder what other contexts or special circumstances prompt exceptions to the rules of property?