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.
