Parents — do you get offended when pet owners call their pets their ‘children’?
Fundamentally though, does it harm you — and is it any of your business?
Someone tagged me in a link on Facebook the other day to this story, that seemed to be doing the rounds again, thinking I would, as a childfree-by-choice dog owner, have something to say about it.
I understand that the author, Elizabeth Broadbent, has strong views on this subject — strong enough, in fact, to write a whole article on how offended and insulted she is by the “pet parent” phenomenon.
Here’s an important point she missed though. In a culture that still holds motherhood as the pinnacle of achievement for women, for childfree and childless women, identifying as a ‘pet parent’ can also be a way of feeling less left out of the ‘mommy club’. In a society that paints childless women as selfish, we often go to great pains to try and demonstrate to people who judge us for it that we are not selfish, terrible people. Taking care of a pet at least demonstrates your ability to care for another being, human or not — and whether or not you see it on the same scale, pets do need a lot of the same things that children do.
I’ve also learned through my job and my own experiences with mental health that pets can have huge therapeutic benefits, for those who are able to take care of one. Furthermore, for those who don’t have kids because of circumstance, especially when your mental illness makes parenthood incompatible or impossible, pets often provide a very important outlet for caring, nurturing, and yes, maternal/paternal urges. If it helps people to deal with any sadness, regret, or longing they may feel about their inability, for whatever reason, to be parents, then is it really harmful to anyone else? If I’m supporting someone who identifies as a ‘pet parent’ in my job in mental health, it’s not for me to correct them, even though I personally don’t see my relationship with my pet in the same way — Alfie is a dog, not a person, and frankly, that’s his main appeal. The problem with modern life is that we tend to see everything quite egocentrically. Ms. Broadbent’s article is an example of how personally we often take things that have nothing to do with us and we have no business judging.
So the next time you feel irritated by someone calling their pet their baby, just take a step back from that immediate reaction and wish to correct them and remind yourself that you don’t know everything that’s going on for that person. If the worst it causes you is a minor irritation, then is it worth turning it into an argument? Surely there are better things we could be getting worked up about.
