This chapter argues that determining ‘what actually matters’ in personal value requires confronting the deep adult-normative biases embedded in consequentialist thought. While consequentialism claims to evaluate humans objectively—by the extent to which they can be harmed or benefited—it routinely reproduces historical patterns of dividing people into in-groups and out-groups, assigning lesser value to the existence of those whose cognitive lives diverge from adult norms. The chapter traces how Locke’s account of personhood, and later consequentialist refinements by Fletcher and Singer, identify moral status with sophisticated cognitive capacities: reason, reflection, preference formation and biographical narrative. Tying personhood to such capacities risks a systematic false-negative: misclassifying individuals as ‘non-persons’ whenever those adult-coded capacities are absent. The chapter proposes biographical narrative as a more capacious and morally secure foundation for consequentialist valuation. Narrative engagement—awareness of oneself, awareness of others and the impulse to make sense of experience—captures the meaningfulness of human existence without reducing value to a narrow checklist of abilities. Because narrative is constructed through sensation, memory, relationship and interpretive impulse, it resiles from the reductive tendencies that imperil infants and others whose capacities differ from typical adult profiles. The chapter contends that evaluating persons by their ability to construct biography offers a robust defence against adult-normative misvaluation, broadening consequentialist ethics in a way that better protects childness.