Given my limited data set (my own children and OPB* for example, grandchildren) I have known, it seems that, while all the babies I have known have been human, there is a brief period before they transition from intelligent infant to self-aware person. I have actually seen—or, at least I think I have—the *CLICK* when a baby suddenly thinks “Hey! I am ME!”
Before that point in time, they are still very definitely human, but thereafter, they are solidly PEOPLE.
Is it just me? Maybe.
The really sad, sad thing is that I see A LOT OF people in our society ceding their personhood to someone else’s “identity politics,” handing off the agency of their sapience to someone else’s control. Scary. But maybe the phenomenon only seems more widespread because it is so widely publicized by—wait for it— the Hivemind Media. Or, maybe the Hivemind Media is spreading the phenomenon. OR, perhaps I should embrace the power of “and.”
*OPB = other people’s babies