Pets in the American Family 

by Kris Bulcroft, Ph.D. Originally published in 
People, Animals, Environment, Vol. 8, No. 4, Fall 1990, pp. 13-14. 


Several years ago I interviewed a 70-year-old man while conducting a study on 
senior center participation. It was during the course of this in interview that 
my subject was asked to recall one of his most vivid memories as a child, as 
part of an assessment procedure designed to test his cognitive abilities and 
memory. I paused and waited for the answer. When his reply was not immediately 
forthcoming, I looked up from my interview form only to see the older man's eyes 
well with tears. My immediate thought was that this man must have experienced 
some great loss during his childhood - perhaps the death of his parents or the 
foreclosure of the family farm. Rather, with tears rimming his eyes, he began to 
relate the story. It took him back to age 8 when he saw his dog, Ben, killed by 
a stray bullet while hunting. "I haven't thought about Ben for years," he said, 
"but thinking about him now it seems like it was only yesterday." 
The impact this pet made on my respondent when he was a child was not atypical. 
Several other older respondents related similar stories concerning pets in their 
childhood. Some of the stories were not as dramatic as the death of a beloved 
pet, but all shared the common theme that as children pets have a real and 
lasting impact on most of us. 
Such unsolicited comments about pets, as brought forth in the interviews, 
prompted me to pursue funding to explore the unique and curious ways in which 
companion animals relate to children and other family members. My training in 
family sociology prepared me in many ways for the study at hand, but in many 
others I felt unequipped. In particular, there seemed to be almost no 
"scientific" or empirical studies of pets in the American family, and I found 
for the first time in my career that I was embarking on an uncharted journey of 
discovery. 
I solicited the assistance of a colleague from the University of Rhode Island, 
Dr. Alexa Albert, and we set out to conduct a study of pets in family life. We 
were interested in knowing more about the roles that pets played in the 
"average" family. In particular, we set out to investigate how the role that 
pets play might change as the family itself changed. In other words, as the 
couple went from newlyweds, to the birth of children, to parenting of teenagers, 
and then the empty-nest stage, did these changes also mean variations in the 
number of pets in the household or the functions that these pets might play in 
the family? While such questions seem intuitive in their responses, we were 
again struck by how little research had been done on pets in the American 
family. We found we were operating from a set of assumptions about pets in the 
family that had never been well documented. 
Thanks to a generous grant from the Delta Society, Dr. Albert and I were able to 
conduct our study of pets and the family. We interviewed nearly 1,000 people by 
telephone in Providence, R. I., and Rice County, Minn., during the summer of 
1985. Most of these households had pets, but we also made sure that we included 
representation from families in which no pets were present (this consisted of 
about 200 households). We also conducted approximately 100 face-to-face 
interviews in the homes of pet-owning families who were selected to represent 
the various stages of family life. Although both my colleague and I are 
collectively the owners of 5 cats, 3 dogs, 3 birds, 2 rabbits, and some fish, we 
attempted to make our study as free from bias as possible. This meant that we 
went into the study assuming that not all aspects of pet ownership were positive 
and that many of the compelling arguments on the benefits of living with a pet 
needed to be critically challenged and empirically documented. This was to be 
our task. 

Pets and The Family Life Course
The reasons why a family might own a pet change, as does the probability of 
ownership, as the family itself changes overtime. We found that families in 
which children were present were the most likely to own pets. Children 
themselves often initiated the purchase or acquisition of a pet. For example, 
bringing home "stray" pets is a phenomenon that seems to occur in homes in which 
children are present. However, these pets that are usually considered the 
child's pet are more likely to be cared for by the mother. In fact, at all 
stages of the family life course, it is the adult woman in the home who is most 
likely to be the designated caregiver for the pet. This, of course, may include 
cleaning the bird cage, feeding the pet, grooming the pet, or purchasing 
toys/food for the pet. On the other hand, adult males participate more in the 
exercise of the pet. Thus, traditional gender role performance does not deviate 
when it comes to the care and maintenance of the family pet. 
Families with incomes of less than $8,000 were the least likely to own a pet. 
Remarried families had the highest rates of pet ownership, followed by 
once-married families, and lastly by widowed or never-married individuals. Thus, 
it is probably safe to conclude that children not only facilitate pet ownership, 
but that there is the generalized belief that is shared by the majority of 
parents that having a pet for the children will bring rewards such as increased 
levels of responsibility and nurturance. Yet our data suggest that the family 
member doing the most nurturing of the pets and carrying the most responsibility 
for their care is the wife or mother. 
In both Rhode Island and Minnesota, the most common pet was a dog, but rates of 
cat ownership were not far behind. In the more rural area represented by the 
data collected in Minnesota, we see much wider variety in terms of the kinds of 
animals the family members call "pets." Some of the pets in Minnesota included 
raccoons, cows, pigs, and sheep. The urban area demonstrated much less 
variability in the types of pets owned. While some critics of our study are 
quick to point out that such farmyard animals are typically not considered to be 
"pets" in most previous studies, we counter their arguments by stating that we 
purposely left the definition of "pet" ambiguous, thus letting the families 
identify any animal they felt served as a companion to one or more family 
member. 
While we know that stage of the family life course is related to the likelihood 
of owning a pet, with those stages in which children are present the most likely 
to have pets, we felt a need to explore further the exact roles and functions 
that pets played in the family. One way of doing this was to ask about 
attachment to the pet. Using several questions to get at the notion of 
attachment, we found a pattern that was quite contrary to the pattern of 
ownership. Just as those families with children were more likely to own a pet, 
so too were they lowest in attachment levels for the pet. In fact, newlyweds, 
the widowed, and those who had never married had the highest levels of 
attachment. If this truly means that pets often supplant family members is not 
clear, but it is evident that in those households that are inhabited primarily 
by adults we find higher levels of attachment. We can only speculate that this 
may be due to the increased amount of time the adult(s) might spend with the pet 
in the absence of children or that pets do, indeed, serve as substitutes for 
children.

Are Pets Family Members?
The vast majority of our sample stated that their pets were considered to be 
family members. In fact, the sentiment was so strongly in favor of the statement 
"To what extent do you feel that (pet's name) is a part of your family?" that 87 
percent agreed strongly with the statement. Even in those households in which 
pets were not present, the general belief that pets are family members was 
evidenced. It was interesting to note that the main reason given for not owning 
a pet at the time of the interview was due to living arrangement restrictions 
such as rental agreements that prohibited pet ownership. From these 
observations, it is tempting to conclude that most Americans feel pets are a 
natural and valued part of family life. 
My colleague and I conjecture that pets will continue to be "family members" in 
the future. Our data suggest that even though families themselves may be in 
transition due to higher divorce rates, remarriage, smaller family size, and 
other demographic shifts, the role and function of pets in the family is likely 
to be stronger than ever. If, as our research indicates, attachment levels are 
highest in those households in which children are not present, then shifting 
demographics that point toward single or reduced numbers in households indicate 
higher levels of attachment for pets. If, indeed, as some family scholars have 
suggested, the family is to be required to serve as a "haven in a heartless 
world" then the presence of pets plays an even more predominant role. 
Thinking back to my interviews with those older individuals who inspired the 
work that Dr. Albert and I conducted, I still cannot explain why the bond 
between a child and a pet is strong enough that it can bring tears to the eyes 
of an old man as he recalls a childhood pet. But our data collected in "average" 
families attests to the timeless bond between animal and human that continues to 
play such an important role in family life.

Другие статьи

Анималотерапия

На главную


Hosted by uCoz