Is there inheritable behavior (or a Mixin) for setting/getting the 'Parent' and 'Children' properties of a custom class?

I ran into a problem with setting the Parent and Children of a user-defined class, and I ended up writing my own methods that seem a lot more complicated than they need to be. I'm wondering if there is inheritable behavior for this?

classdef superClass
    properties
        Parent = [];
        Children = [];
    end
    methods
        function obj = superClass( varargin )
            % Set the parent, children given input.
            p = inputParser;
            addOptional( p, 'Parent', obj.Parent );
            addOptional( p, 'Children', obj.Children );
            parse( p, varargin{:} );
            obj.setParent( p.Results.Parent );
            obj.setChildren( p.Results.Children ); 
        end
        
        function setParent( obj, otherObj )
            % Behaviour of this function should probably be a lot more nuanced than this:
            obj.Parent = otherObj;
        end
    
        function setChildren( obj, otherObj )
            % Probably don't want to have multiple references to the same Child?
            obj.Children = vertcat( otherObj, obj.Children );
        end
    end
end

classdef subClass < superClass
    properties
    end
    methods
        function obj = subClass( varargin )
            p = inputParser;
            addOptional( p, 'Parent', obj.Parent );
            addOptional( p, 'Children', obj.Children );
            parse( p, varargin{:} );
            % Set myClass instance's Parent, Children given input AND concurrently
            % set superClass' instance's Children to include this new subClass object.
            obj.setParent( p.Results.Parent );  % This needs to be overridden?
            obj.setChildren( p.Results.Children );   % This needs to be overridden?
        end
    end
end

I want these classes to be able to make the following code error-free:

dad = superClass();
son = subClass( 'Parent', dad );
if ismember( dad, son.Parent )
    disp( 'hooray' )
else
    disp( 'booooo' )
end

[per isakson]

See SuperclassList of meta.class Describe MATLAB class. It's somewhat related to your question.

I would have expected

ismember( dad, son.Parent )

rather than

ismember( dad.Children, son.Parent )

[Dominik Mattioli]

You're right; edit made.

Answer 1

[per isakson]

"make the following code error-free"

There is a problem regarding handle or value class. In the code it's assumed that superClass is a handle-class, however it's defined as a value-class. I assume you intended it as a handle-class and replace

classdef superClass

by

classdef superClass < handle

Furthermore, I replace subClass by

classdef subClass < superClass
    properties
    end
    methods
        function obj = subClass( varargin )
            obj@superClass( varargin{:} );
        end
    end
end

(propably not needed)

Now

%%
dad = superClass();
son = subClass( 'Parent', dad );
%%
if ismember( dad, son.Parent )
    disp( 'hooray' )
else
    disp( 'booooo' )
end

prints hooray in the Command Window

"there is inheritable behavior for this?" AFAIK: No