I was right on board with you, **Jettboy **… until that last post. I think you’re on to something, but you’ve gone a little beyond the pale.
I agree with the gist of your post, but I wouldn’t say that I love my cat the same way I love my new computer monitor. If my monitor died, I’d be pissed off, but I doubt I’d find myself going over pictures I took of it when I first got it, telling people what a great little piece of electronics it was.
On the other hand, if my cat died, I’d be noticably upset, and I would think back whistfully of the good times I’d had with him (forgetting, of course, the millions of times the little shit puked on my living room rug).
So, no, the love of a pet is in no way comparable to the love of a child. But there’s a little more to it than that. They are living breathing things, you gotta give them a little more of yourself than you’d give to a paper clip.
Naw, cats and dogs interact, just on a lesser level than humans. In my opinion there is a continuum, from inanimate objects up through animals to people. That continuum is based on the relative concious abilities of the subject (or object) of affection.
One may “love” a doll or favorite toy or blanket, but it cannot love you back. A pet can (to a limited extent), but that love isn’t of the same quality as that of another human, because the abilities of the pet are lesser.
Did you actually think I really meant real live Vulcans?
If you did I’d say that says more about your intelligence than mine, but thats just me.
How about an unfeeling rainman/apspergerer/accoutant/engineer type that doesn’t have any real “feelings” per say. Is that straightforward enough for you?
I’d argue that someone like that has a more “real” love if they take care of a child than someone who takes care of a child because of some inate biological “drive”.
And given how many batshit crazy “loving” women I personally know royally screwing up their children, I’d say their kids would be better off with the cold accountant as well.
I don’t believe there are any such persons. Emotions are based on our physiology and are inescapable so long as we live (which is not to say that we cannot learn to control their expression and guide their generation.) There are, however, many persons who have difficulty articulating their emotions for reasons organic, psychological, or cultural.
Some human babies do stay defenseless for that long. At the church I hypocritically intend there are several developmentally disabled persons who’ll never get past the age of 7 or 8 mentally.
There is a cat on my lap. Her name is, embarrassingly, Mrs. Whatsit. I am quite fond of Mrs. Whatsit; she is my cat, after all. I’d probably hazard my safety to safe Mrs. Whatsit from harm, though I’d stop before I got myslf killed, I hope. (Well, I might not, as i am frequently a hotheaded moron.) But I wouldn’t sacrifice the life of any other human being to save hers, because she is a cat, and I am a human being. My ethical responsibility is to put the welfare of humanity above all other considerations.
Also I’m not quite as crazy as I must sometimes seem hereabouts.
Heck, I will personally and without hesitation drive corkscrews through the eyes and into the brains of 20, or even 200 strangers if some madman wanted me to.
Oh, and uhm… to save my cat, too.
The only value of such a hypothetical is in ridiculing it.
When I saw you in the Pit thread I started to mention that the cat’s named after you, but then I decided you were one of three Dopers absolutely certain to understand the allusion.
Wow, that’s pretty awful, gotta tell you. I’d give up the life of every pet I own to save your life. It’s my moral duty; to choose otherwise would make one no better than a murderer.
Well, I believe that you believe it, as the old line goes.
For much of history humans owned other humans in most societies on earth. It’s more or less still going on in coutries with few legal protections for child brides, for example. Certainly in some places and times a man owned his children in every way that matters. Over the sweep of historical time, your statement is the one that’s wrong…legally speaking.
Morally, however, you’re right – ownership of a human is an outdated and offensive concept, and at this point in time, some societies have grown beyond it.
Is it totally outside your worldview to imagine that the concept of who we can morally own might shift even further at some point in the future? And that that shift wouldn’t occur all at once, but that some people would think that way before everyone thought that way?
And that as that (hypothetical) shift is occurring, you would still legally “own” your pet but, to some people, people on the cutting edge of this hypothetical social trend, it would be morally repugnant? Much like 1859 in the US, when you could legally own, sell, beat, and do anything you liked to other human beings…but not everyone agreed that they were morally your property?
Legally, currently, you can say you are correct on this point.
But over the long view the line is not as clear and bright as you have drawn it, and it may not stay where you drew it…it may even be moving now.
Except, obviously, you don’t. Why it is that you have a problem with my stating that my feelings are “xyz” I have no idea, but repeating myself it boring.
It evolved into why parents think it is offensive. Haven’t yet seen anything about that, other than the little feet stamping as the parents so “you can’t know, you aren’t a parent!!!eleventy1!!!”.
I have said nothing of the sort. If you think those things were directed at you, then perhaps you need to revisit the relationship with your children.
So, if you have nothing more than this sort of emotional outburst, there is obviously nothing to discuss.
See, that is where I don’t just make assumptions - so much of humanity deserves to live far less than my cat. I know my cat; I don’t know if any random stranger is a decent person, so my automatic reaction would be to protect the cat.
Um, OK. More emotional stuff. Failing to save the life of a stranger is not murder, but whatever. If nothing else, your morals are not necessarily the morals of others - I don’t expect strangers to give up the lives of someone they love to save me.
Some days I feel like I don’t really own my cats - they own me, and have trained me to get food for them on command.
Sure, I love them to bits and spoil them rotten (one of them is especially needy and has gotten in the bad habit of jumping into my lap whenever she damn well pleases because I let her), and I consider them a part of my patchwork “family”, but I know my cat-“persons” are not equivalent to people-persons.
I was also old enough to remember watching my little brother grow up from when my mother was pregnant with him, and I’ve babysat him for just about as long. I like to joke that I’m like a second mother to him, but I wasn’t the one soothing him to sleep every night or the one wiping his brow the many, many, MANY times he was ill or the one accompanying him to the emergency room the other times he cracked his fool head open.
Hypothetical situations are useless to contemplate because you don’t know how you’ll react in the circumstance until you’re in it. (You hope you can Do the Right Thing, and try to coach yourself towards that direction, but in the spur of the moment crazy things can happen.)
Your feelings are no more valid than mine. I loved my animals as much as you claim to love yours. Why do you think loving your animals is less worthy than being a parent? You’re the one saying one equates to the other.
We think it’s offensive, because animals are not people. Not all the love in the world will turn them into humans, therefore pet ownership is not parenthood. Again, you’re the one who is trying to equate the two.
I’ve never said they were directed at me personally. You’ve repeatedly judged parents as a group by the worst excesses you’ve seen reported or heard second hand. You are subject to the same judgement, you can be lumped in with the worst animal abusers. Why do you feel this need to compare yourself with parents? I don’t consider myself a horse breeder when my kid eats oats for breakfast.
I’m not being emotional. I’m not saying:
Yet, since that statement you’ve gone on to say;
*1. As far as I can tell, most parents become less attached to their children as they go from baby to toddler to gradeschooler to teenager to out-on-their-own.
However, with the extreme pressure on women to have babies, there are those who find out too late they prefer their cat. Very sad for the child, but it doesn’t mean there is anything “wrong” with the person.
Far too many parents get pets as something to have until the children come.
I chose to have my dogs and cat - far too many parents just let having children happen.
Raising a pet well involves experiencing unconditional love that **doesn’t go away when the pet is a teenager, ** (bolding mine)
You want us to respect how you feel about your children, but you refuse to respect how we feel about our pets.
(Compare this to)
6a. simply because you are a parent and say you have some level of feeling for your child(ren), it means nothing to me.
This “disconnect” allows me to look at children as just something that other people do, without the hormonal haze changing the way things appear.
(snip)given the number of news reports about parents who abuse and murder their children. How, given this evidence, can anyone assume that any given parent must love their children more than I love my pets?
I don’t care how much or little you love your child. (see 6 again)
If nothing else, most of the news stories about abused and murdered children include parents wailing about how much they loved that child they abused and/or murdered.
Other than that, I went thru the same things that parents appear to.*
You can check, but they’re all cut and paste quotes from Curlcoat, who wants everyone to acknowledge her love, but dismisses the love of others, who claims to love her dogs more than ‘any given’ parent loves their child, while freely admitting she doesn’t know how parents feel.
I’ll say it again, your love for your pets does not give you any insight into being a parent. I used the word ignorant because you are ignorant (as you admitted in your first post) of how parents feel. See also, point 7. You have a ‘disconnect’ to the ‘hormonal haze’ that parents have - that’s the reality of parenting, it’s more than liking or loving a pet - pretending it isn’t is ignoring objective reality.
Oh and, my relationship with my kid is fine, I’m neither going to sterilize her nor sell her children.
I read this three times and still don’t get what you mean. Yes, I am one of the ones that is saying that it is possible that one can love a pet as much as a child. I don’t think loving my pets is less worthy than being a parent. From what you have said, it doesn’t appear that you loved your “animals” as much as I love my dogs and cat.
I am not trying to equate humans and animals.
Or seen myself. And if you had read what I posted, I was saying that simply being a parent does not guarantee that person will feel the sort of love that you profess only parents can feel and that they will feel this automatically and that it eclypses all other possible loves. For some reason, parents who have a major problem with the subject at hand seem to feel that all parents love their children the exact same way/amount/depth, and for that reason all love for pets must be lesser. I merely point out that there is a wide range of parental love out there.
I don’t, in any way. I merely use a word/phrase that you seem to think parents have first call on.
This is why I think you are only looking at this in an emotional way. For one thing, I have never dismissed the love of others - the closest I have come is to say that there is no way I can experience how anyone else feels about anything, so all I can go on is what they say and how they act. For example, you can go on all you want about how much you love your child, but since I am not you and cannot feel your feelings, your words are all I have to go on. Based on the words and actions of a rather large sampling of parents I know and just run across, I love my dogs and cat more than some, way more than others and the same as the rest. I imagine there are parents out there that feel more love, but I haven’t met them, and I’m not sure that sort of love would be good for their kids anyway.
I never said I did. The closest I have come to insight on being a parent was raising my last two brothers.
You admit that at least some of the love that you want placed above all else comes from hormones?
OK, so the purpose of this thread is to find out if equating child-love to pet-love is offensive to anyone, or if it should just generally be considered offensive. Ultimately, any offense is going to come down to an individual reaction.
At the core of any offense is going to be a difference of opinion about how equal child-love and pet-love are to each other. As both a parent and a pet owner, I believe that they’re not even on the same scale. They’re not even remotely comparable, and to imply that they are in a serious manner (not just making conversation) is ludicrous. I might choose to be offended by that.
If you don’t want me to be offended, you’ll have to convince me that I’m wrong, that child-love and pet-love are equal. And, to convince me of that, you’ll have to overcome my immensely powerful personal experience.
Hint, you won’t do that.
All that’s left is to convince me that you’re a batshit crazy kid-hating pet-lady who’s wired so incorrectly that she truly loves her pets as much as I love my own children. I then may choose to accept that, for YOU at least, you can love pets just as much as I love my kids. So, then, fine. I won’t be offended. But I’m still going to walk away forever knowing you as that batshit crazy kid-hating pet-lady.
Now be prepared to accept that 99.99% of the parents on Earth share my sentiments to the letter, and you have a choice – accept that everyone will forever know you as that batshit crazy kid-hating pet-lady as soon as you bring up the subject, or change your mind and drop the idea that pet-love can ever equal child-love.
It doesn’t seem like you’re going to change your mind. And I can say with absolute certainty that you won’t change the minds of any parents in this thread. Why you continue to argue your point here is beyond me.
You don’t know how I feel, to use your own phrase.
Yes, you said that breeding animals for five generations meant you felt the same ‘I made that’ feeling as a parent seeing their own genetic heritage in a child.
Which is not the same as the love of a pet. They are not comparable - as you said, you don’t know how a parent feels.
You whole hijack of this thread is that you love your dogs more than people love their children. That’s a direct comparison.
But parenting is not raising animals, which you admit, both by saying you don’t know how parents feel and acknowledging that you have a ‘disconnect’ with the ‘hormonal haze’ that parent feel. Now you’re saying that loving kids more is bad for them? How can you judge without knowing how parents feel currently?
So, you’re not a parent and you weren’t raised by parents? But you know parents lose affection through out their kid’s lives to the point where they stop loving them as teenagers?
Your hormones don’t affect how you feel? You don’t get that rush when you look at your husband? Hormones are a small part. That hormonal kick start is what allows adoptive parents to bond with their children. Parenting as a whole is a much more involved process.
You’re the one who equated breeding dogs to being a parent. If you now see the comparison as ridiculous, we may be reaching you.
