Where the hell do you think the love you feel for your cat comes from? Your immortal soul? It’s a chemical reaction in your brain. A hormone.
True, and if what you are saying is that there are SOME parents who do not love their children as much as SOME pet owners love their pets, then that is clearly true. Some parents don’t give a good goddamn about their kids.
However, if what you are saying is that some pet owners (such as yourself) love their pets as much as your average, normal parent loves their kids, then you are probably not right about that.
Your evidence that makes you believe that your average parent doesn’t love their children as much as you love your dog doesn’t hold up to me. For instance, you describe situations where people let their kids play unsupervised, and don’t know where they are. The fact is, kids are not dogs or cats. There are many reasons why a responsible parent may feel comfortable letting their kids play somewhere without them, while still being the kind of person who wouldn’t do the same with their dog. I don’t let my cat outside, ever, because I had one that ran away and I never saw her again, which took me a long time to get over. But you can do that with a cat, because it’s not one of the jobs of being a cat owner to teach her to be independent and leave you some day. This IS part of the job of being a parent…one of the most important aspects of parenthood. It’s not always easy to let your kids go off and do their own thing, but from a pretty young age, you have to give them the chance to do so, and they have to get progressively more independent the older they get. Also, you can’t teach your cats not to go off with strangers, not to walk in front of a car, and to come home when the street lights come on. You also can’t rely on other people to care about the welfare of your cat the way they would care about the welfare of a child…even a child they’ve never met.
Essentially, you treat your pets they way people treat infants, because that’s pretty much the level of helplessness pets have. Every need has to be provided for. They have to be supervised constantly. They can’t learn to make their own way in the world or operate independently of you. It’s totally different from being a parent…the goals and responsibilites are not the same…so you can’t necessarily look at the actions of a parent and say that they are not treating their kids with as much love as you treat your pets.
Well, of course it does. That’s why it’s so powerful.
I wouldn’t be able to do it unless you can explain why you are offended, as that makes no sense to me.
Let’s take it out of the emotionally charged area of children and use another example. I have health issues that mean that I am in moderate to severe pain at all times. I take narcotics to have something approaching a normal life, which bring their own problems. Many many times someone with a minor temporary pain issue like a headache or muscle strain will compare what they are feeling with what I live with. Does this offend me? I really don’t know why it would. I just assume that this person has no experience with the issues that I live with and so doesn’t know what they are talking about. Or, since I have a fairly high pain threshold, I wonder if maybe the headache sufferer has a rather low pain threshold and suppose that it is possible that they feel minor pain the way I feel much stronger pain. And this is an area where it can easily be proven that what I feel is much worse and harder to manage. In the case of comparison of depth of love, this is something that probably cannot be proven, yet you decide to be offended?
Mothers seem to have a corner on the children-dwarf-all-other-experiences market tho. About 20 years ago I was working 3 jobs, plus we had just had a heavy snowfall on the ten acres I lived on. I was tired, both physically and mentally. I was at Thanksgiving, in the kitchen catching up with my uncle and talking about all I was doing and how tired it made me. My cousin stomped into the room and screamed at me that I would “never know what tired is” until I had children. Um, OK. Now granted she had a six month old and a 1 1/2 year old, but she also didn’t work and one of my other cousins would stay with her for a week or so when she could to help with the baby. Yes, I imagine she was tired, but to yell at me for daring to use the word about myself? And of course many mothers dismiss my ongoing crippling pain as less than the pain of childbirth. I have never (what is the quote?) pushed a St Bernard thru a cat door, but then this is something these mothers chose to do, many did it multiple times, they apparently chose to do it without drugs, and it only lasted hours, or rarely, days. How can that compare to decades of pain? Hint - it doesn’t.
Do these things offend me? Well, getting screamed at did, but otherwise, no.
I’m not batshit crazy and neither do I hate kids as you seem to think I do, but your response is exactly why I wonder how rational these offended parents are. I compare my feelings for my dogs and cat to your feelings for your child(ren) and you get offended, freak out, throw around insults and generally act like a - cough - child.
Well, sorry, they don’t. This thread is the first time in over 50 years that I have ever seen a parent state they are offended by the comparison and it is certainly the first time I’ve seen someone throw a hissy fit about it.
Or we can go with the reality, that most parents appear to be more stable than this.
Because I get emails and I tend to come and look and post. Sorry that upsets you as well.
I never said I was offended. I said I might choose to be. It depends on intent and how obnoxious the situation is. My default is to almost never be offended.
This is what I’m saying. Regardless of if I take offense, this is the best you can do. You equate child-love and pet-love, I assume you don’t know what you’re talking about. Yet you seem to insist that you do.
I’m not a mother, and I didn’t say my parenting dwarfs all other experiences. I do say it dwarfs pet ownership though.
I’m not offended, I’m not freaking out, and I don’t really mean to insult. I’m just saying, if you honestly insist that kid-love = pet-love, that’s so far outside of anything my brain considers normal that I can’t help but think you’re crazy. Maybe that’s a personal failing, but what can I do? You sound crazy to me.
Do you go around making the comparison a lot? If you made the comparison to my face at a party or something, I wouldn’t say anything. I’d just leave thinking you’re crazy. Even if you had just made one post here and left it at that, it would have gone under the radar. Just because it’s never come up before doesn’t mean you’re normal. And this is hardly a hissy-fit.
Post all you want, you’re the one coming off as crazy. Doesn’t upset me one bit.
Which is exactly the crux of the situation. I don’t know exactly how you feel about your child and you don’t know exactly how I feel about my pets. And we never will. So all we have to go on is the outside indications, the results of those feelings. Based on those indications, I come to the conclusion that I love my dogs and cat as much as a majority of parents love their kids. This offends you for some reason.
That is not equating humans and animals, it is equating seeing traits passed down generations.
The love of a pet or the love for a pet? We are not discussing how the pets feel here. If you mean the love for a pet, you are just repeating yourself when you say they are not comparable in your experience.
Hijack? The thread is about parents being offended by people like me. And, I have not said that I love my dogs more than people love their children, tho I have noted that simply having a child doesn’t guarantee the parent will love it any more than getting a pet guarantees the owner will love it.
There are parents that love their children, or are at least obsessed with them, to the point that it is bad for the child. There are also pet owners like that. I do not love my dogs and cat to that level.
The closest insight I have had on being a parent myself was raising those two brothers. I was raised by parents - my mother was average and my father sucked. He is one who did not automatically love his kids when they were born.
I didn’t say that parents stop loving their kids when they become teenagers. If you would actually read, several posts up, what I said was the baby moves from unconditional love for it’s parents thru various levels of trying to become their own individuals, until most of them hit the teen years and yell at their parents that they hate them. Pets that you bond with do not lose the unconditional love they give you, and there are even times that abused pets will still unconditionally love their owners.
There are bunches of studies that show or strongly support the theory that hormones form a large basis of how a new mother feels about her baby, or how most women feel when they see a baby - the awwww factor. I don’t have that; the closest I have is when I see a kitten - I act the same way women do when they see a baby so it appears that for whatever reason, my hormones react to kitten faces rather than baby faces. Yes, parenting (and pet ownership) is much more than just hormones, but that is what appears to jump start the unconditional love.
I didn’t make that comparison.
I don’t know exactly how you feel about your chronic pain, and you don’t know exactly how I feel about my occasional migraine. But based on every outward indication you’ve given me, they’re the same thing.
Now, I’m not saying that I’m in MORE pain than you, but I think our pain is equal. If you insist that I don’t know what I’m talking about, then I can only assume that your tolerance for pain is weak and that you need to suck it up and deal with it; that’s what I do with my migraines, and since all indications are that our pain is equal, it should work for you too. I have no problem going to work while dealing with my pain, and I can’t believe that you’re unable to work because of yours.
I can lay it on even thicker if that doesn’t come close to bothering you.
And see, in your pain example, we’re not even comparing two difference sensations – we can work off the assumption that we both know what pain feels like, and the only debate is the relative intensity. However, in the child-love versus pet-love scenario, we’re talking two different sensations entirely, one of which you simply have not experienced. And yet, you’re surprised that anyone would be bothered by your insistence that outward indications are sufficient to declare them to be equal sensations.
Ah, well then you put on a good act. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that you told me that I am supposed to keep you from getting offended.
Yes, that is my belief, going on what I see of parents. Apparently you cannot even be bothered to look at those on the other side of the issue, you just jump in and call them crazy.
Then that comment didn’t apply to you did it?
Snort. Bat shit crazy isn’t an insult in your world?
So, kid-love = pet-love is so far outside of anything your brain considers normal that you have to decide it is crazy. Do you apply “crazy” to everything you personally don’t get? I don’t - even tho even liking a kid is so far outside of anything I consider normal, I don’t think that parents are crazy just for having kids. The thought of having sex with a woman is way outside my comfort zone, but I don’t think lesbians are crazy.
You aren’t very accepting of anything different than yourself, are you?
Oh gee, thanks for your permission.
You really aren’t good with anything outside your own experience are you? You think that decades of pain that cannot be killed with narcotics is the same thing as an occasional migraine? For real?
Perhaps you don’t, but the government does - I haven’t worked for over a year and for almost a year prior I worked from home so I could continue to work.
No, it doesn’t bother me, I just think you have quite a bit of trouble understanding anything you haven’t experienced yourself.
So, love for you is a different sensation depending on where it is aimed?
As for “simply not experienced” I can say the same for you since you obviously have never loved a pet.
steronz, there’s a handy list of curlcoat’s self contradicting posts on the previous page. I can’t play along as though this is a real debate anymore, I have work to do.
Now she loves them more than the majority of parents love their kids? Oh dear, how terribly upsetting! Could she just be saying this new thing to upset us? Surely not.
Bye all, have fun.
Surely you don’t consider having kids abnormal. You don’t like kids, great, but you would agree that people having kids is a pretty normal thing to do. Lesbians used to be considered crazy, but the gay community went through great effort to adjust society’s definition of what’s normal. Just because I’m not gay doesn’t mean I can’t accept that being gay is normal.
People claiming to love pets as much as children is not normal. And it flies in the face of my own personal experience. Maybe some day you and your like-minded brethren will march down the streets of San Fransisco with your cats and dogs dressed up like people shouting, “We’re here, we’re not crazy even though you think we are, get used to it,” and I’ll change my tune.
:smack:
Yes, I’m fully convinced that they’re the same thing. Why won’t you accept that my random migraines are the same thing as your decades of chronic pain? I think you have quite a bit of trouble understanding anything you haven’t experienced yourself.
Hey steronz, for your next comparison you might want to work in some kind of relationship between curlcoat on the one hand and a bag of hammers on the other. Or a box of rocks, if you prefer.
This might turn out to be fun, after all!
Yup. Yet for some reason, parents think the hormonal reaction in their brains that causes them to automatically love their kids is “better” or “above” or whatever than the hormonal reaction in mine. Even tho it’s highly likely that it is the exact same hormone, working exactly the same way, just on a different target.
And they’re right. It is. Not all reactions are the same. I love prime rib but that doesn’t mean I love it as much as I love my wife. You don’t love your pets as much as I do my kid.
When you have kids, let us know. If you don’t plan on it, accept you are in a state of ignorance.
Why? Because you don’t feel it yourself, therefore it can’t be true? I feel none of the awwww that most women feel for any random baby, but since that is how I feel about any random kitten I can extrapolate that the women are feeling that. Even tho it makes no sense to me.
In that example I’m talking little bitty kids that shouldn’t be anywhere outside their homes without adult supervision. I can’t tell you the exact ages since I’m not good at that, but somewhere around the time that they are able to run easily, without tripping over their own feet. Probably at the same time they start feeling the first stirrings of independence. Kids of that age should not be running across the street alone, nor should they be anywhere by themselves in a mall or show. Yes, good parents lose track of their kids at times, but the ones I am talking about are the ones that aren’t all that concerned when I extract their kid from an exercise pen full of big black dogs and carry it across the park back to them. “Oh, is that where he was?” Sheesh.
Or, kids in strollers left just anywhere in a mall or on the sidewalk while the mom runs back into the house or takes an older kid to the potty. There was one in a crosswalk the other day because, apparently, mom had lost control of an older, mobile child and ran to go catch the runner. Leaving baby in the street. Granted a residential street, but still entirely possible someone would come around the corner and send that stroller into a yard. I came around the corner and just stared at it, then stared at the rearview mirror until she came to collect the stroller, worried someone was going to rear end me.
The goals are not the same, but I don’t see how that pertains to the subject. Also, pets don’t need to be supervised constantly - it’s legal and moral for me to go off and leave a year old dog in the backyard by itself while I go to the store, and it’s legal and moral for me to leave a two year old pet in the car alone, provided it isn’t too hot. Pets don’t go forth into the world and earn a living on their own, but they also don’t require near the supervision that an infant or toddler does, and should have.
Re the hormones - see above post.
OK, you seem to be saying that the only way you accept something that you don’t think/do as OK and normal is to march down the streets of San Fransisco chanting until you give in?
I think you have trouble understanding the difference between “decades” and “occasional”. As well as the difference between pain that can be controlled by drugs and that which cannot.
Your love of prime rib comes from a hormonal reaction?
When you are fully bonded with a pet as much as I have over the years, let me know. If you don’t plan on it, accept you are in a state of ignorance.
I have the “aww” reaction to any random kitten, too, so I guess I do feel it myself. The reason I doubt you love your pets as much as average people love their kids is because I’ve known people who thought they loved their pets as much as people loved their kids, and then they had kids, and they understood the difference. Never met anyone, ever, who had the kids and still thought they loved their dog as much. That is they love the dog as much as they ever did, they just realize that they love the kids more.
I agree that doesn’t sound too smart, but I wouldn’t assume that is how an average, normal, intelligent parent would react. Some people love their kids, but are hopelessly stupid, too. Doen’t mean they love their kids any less, it means they have bad judgement.
Again, bad judgement, which we all have sometimes depending on the circumstance. Can’t really measure love that way.
It’s pertinent because you look at the way parents act and conclude that you love your dogs more. My point is that it’s a bad comparison because raising children and having pets isn’t the same thing. If it was, then I would conclude that you don’t love your dog as much as I love my 2-year-old, because I would never leave my 2-year-old in the backyard unsupervised. Your point here reinforces mine…that the two things are not comparable, so you can’t judge the competency or concern of a parent based on what a pet owner would do.
And I think you have trouble understanding the difference between “kids” and “pets.” Yet you quickly dismiss my assertion that our pain is similar while expecting me to accept your assertion that our feelings of love towards our respective targets are similar.
What makes it worse is that you’ve likely had migraines as well, so you’re in a supreme position to tell me if your chronic pain is similar to an occasional migraine. And I’m more than willing to consider you the expert on making that comparison, since you’ve experienced both sensations.
Meanwhile, I’VE experienced both sensations regarding kids and pets, and I’m telling you they’re not the same thing. But somehow you readily dismiss my experience with my two dogs, Buddy and Cassie, whom I love as much as I can love an animal.
I really hope the parallel isn’t lost on you, because it’s blindingly obvious.