Related to my "meanness of kind people" post recently, Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche just put up Pets as Substitute Children, with interesting data. It has been long noticed, and some cat owners are quite explicit that they like cats better than human children. In fact, they go out of their way to mention it at times. I have wondered if they also like the sexual irresponsibility of cats - they certainly laughingly talk about how Mr. Whiskers has been a bad boy often enough. I just noticed that I am talking exclusively about female cat owners. I wonder if AI illustration automatically chooses a female when asked to portray a cat owner.
Cats have never come up much as a topic around here as my wife is allergic. I like pets in small doses, much preferring dogs. I have always been uncomfortable with the language of pets as children. "Fur babies,""Granddoggies" and all that.
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I have a cat, though I don’t know if I would say that I own him. His name is Gandalf because he is perfectly grey.
One of my co-workers says that dog show people are precisely the sort who treat their pets as their kids.
"Fur babies" is a little too cute for me, but there's no doubt that dogs (and to a much lesser degree cats) occupy a place in my life left empty by the absence of children. It's also true that I have never genuinely enjoyed the company of children.
At the moment I'm putting a lot of effort and treasure into saving a neighborhood child from a family danger--and yet I don't really enjoy hanging out with her or talking to her. I just feel an overwhelming need to fix this problem for her.
Could there be a correlation between the fad of "furries" and their parents with "fur babies". Frankly I don't understand either.
I can picture living alone and wanting to have something alive in the space and developing a significant attachment to it. Even I, who habitually says "Life is more genteel without animals" can at least imagine it for myself.
On pet spending: Private equity has been buying up vet practices. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-private-equity-industry/678180/
The map of birthrates is the same map as this map of state median age: https://www.voronoiapp.com/demographics/The-Median-Age-of-US-States-Utah-is-the-Youngest-Maine-the-Oldest-536
Guess what? When you reach the age of 40, it's much more likely you can acquire a cat than a baby.
In the US, humans are encouraged to refrain from childbearing until adulthood. Roughly, that means women between the ages of 18 and 40 might be searching for baby-related content online. But you can own a cat at any age, and they're far less expensive than children.
So neither graph is evidence that people are substituting pets for children.
Excellent point
Nonetheless it may be true in a subtler way. It may not be that there is some sort of "baby or cat?" decision tree operating freely. But a woman who has elected not to have children, or especially to remain single, might find more drive to get a pet - as might a man, for that matter. Whether getting a cat reduces the desire to have a child seems doubtful, but might be possible.
As to age, I live in that high-pet, low birthrate area called New England, and people either move away from here in young adulthood or just stay until retirement. People move to here to get lots of education and some of those stay. Those both push the average age up, but I doubt either one pushes up the birthrate. There may be a cultural force at a deeper level that people less interested in having children like it here. Having children is a measure of optimism, and that's not us. No one says "I just can't see bringing cats into this terrible world."
"I just can't see bringing cats into this terrible world." - Haha... yes, they do, else there wouldn't be so many spay and neuter initiatives. At least I've not heard of anyone sterilizing their children to prevent that.
As for that phrase aimed toward children, it's always annoyed me as extremely self-centered, and I've thought at times... "Pity your parents did not feel that way".
Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood today.
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