People are always telling the children to be kind to animal but when they are they
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In recent years, the relationship between humans and their pets has been changing. To wit, people increasingly see their pets (i.e., cats and dogs) as core family members. This shift makes sense when you consider the myriad ways that the American family has changed since the 1950s.
Of particular note, marriage rates have been eroding, as people remain single, unmarried, or choose to cohabitate. Moreover, people delay marriage. There has also been a marked rise of childfree women, as well as an increase of non-traditional family structures. According to recent research, these various factors have not only paved the way to new definitions of family and parenthood, but they have also allowed humans to have deeper relationships with animals. Welcome to the 21st century and interspecies families.
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How do people who identify as pet parents make sense of and describe their roles in relation to their pets? This was the focus of a study conducted by researchers Nicole Owens and Liz Grauerholz. Many in the larger culture—and academia—have relegated the phenomenon of pet parenting and the rise of the fur baby to the province of childless adults. This view, the authors maintain, misses the complexity and depth of the human-animal relationship. It also delegitimizes this form of a non-traditional family.
To investigate the psyche of the pet parent, Owens and Grauerholz began by recruiting participants for their study. In the final tally, the sample was mostly white with 28 percent identifying as Hispanic/Latino. In terms of marital status, 46 percent were single, 44 percent were married, and 8 percent were divorced or widowed. Fifty-six percent were women, and 46 percent were parents of (human) children. The average household income was $76,000 U.S., and the average age was 36.6 years. Most of the participants had dogs only (59 percent), or both cats and dogs (39 percent), while 18 percent lived with just cats.
One of the researchers (Owens) interviewed participants in their own homes, using an interview which was organized around nine open-ended questions. Some questions explored the nature of the human-animal relationship, such as, “Tell me about how/when you realized you considered your companion animal a family member.”