OK, let’s put “It’s just a (cat|dog|whatever)” on the list of Things Not to Say, too.
This is what I was thinking, expressed very well. It’s not that the dog is like the baby, or even that the love of the dog-owner is identical to the love of the baby-owner. It’s that the emotions have some similarities between them, and when someone is discussing their emotions, often their conversational partner will try to identify with them by making a connection to their own emotional experiences. This is the closest that non-parental pet-owners can get, many times.
Daniel
I love my pets, but it is a very different love from the love I feel for my children and grandchildren.
It’s “easy” to love a pet. Your dog doesn’t care what kind of person you are, your homecoming is a thrill to your dog every single time. Your cat cares even less as long as it’s fed. Their love, such as it is, is simple and probably instinctual.
No pet is going to be a social misfit or do badly at school or get drunk and wreck your car or commit suicide. Kids can be and do those things and you still love them.
Years ago, in an SDMB thread, someone said her love for her dog was like a parent’s love for a child. She received some nasty responses, some of which said she obviously didn’t have any children to say such a stupid thing. Then the OP returned to provide some background, (as memory serves) she had lost a child in infancy, and explained how her dogs, in some way, helped her deal with that loss emotionally. Then, some of people who originally made nasty comments came back to fuss over the poor, sweet, dear dog owner.
The lesson I took away from that is that people come at the concept of pet love from many different experiences, and it’s not worth getting offended over.
There’s also a current thread about parents who don’t love their children, and it broke my heart to read the posts by Dopers who experienced that first-hand. It turns out I love my cat more, and better, than a lot of the parents described in that thread loved their children. So all parents are not created equal. Also, who do you know that is flinging their cat against a wall? That’s not really a good baseline for pet owner behavior.
Do you want his name and address? The point is people roughhouse with their pets as they would never do with their kids, and care less about their well-being by any objective standard, but sometimes overlook that different standard in discussing pets and kids equally.
I’m not sure “offensive” is the word I’d choose, but it does annoy me when people do this.
I’ve had both kids and pets and there is no comparison between how I feel about them, respectively. Sorry if that makes me a bad pet owner, but if it came down to my child or my pet, pet’s out of luck.
But I’ve never expressed any offence when someone attempts to empathize by using their pet as an example comparable to my child or other human loved one. I DO roll my inner eyes and think less of them, I admit.
How about someone saying they know how you feel after the death of a spouse because their dog died once. :rolleyes: Idiot. But no, I don’t tell them so.
I don’t get it either. When someone mentions that they have a similar situation or feeling with their pet, as another does to their children, they are trying to communicate some empathy. For me it goes:
Caring for infant mammals isn’t all that different regardless of species; and while I know that my foster puppy isn’t the same as your new infant, I can commiserate with you on the lack of sleep and frequent feedings that have got you feeling run down.
I’m trying from my non parental status to understand and empathize with your plight. Remember that for many people who have decided to remain childless, their pets often are surrogate children who help make them feel whole in terms of “a family”.
You know people who fling their cat against the wall in anger, and you consider them close friends? :eek:
I had cats before I had a baby. In the past I’ve also had dogs. It’s not the same experience as having a child, but I really felt like my past pet ownership did a lot to prep me for motherhood and I don’t find it as dissimilar as others seem to. The love I felt for my pets was the closest pre-baby approximation to the love I feel for my daughter.
Saying that someone else claiming to love their cat like a child diminishes your relationship with your actual child is like saying that gay marriage diminishes your heterosexual marriage. It takes nothing away from you when someone who doesn’t share your experience thinks their experience is similar to yours.
So, I get people telling me that if I can’t have kids, I should get a dog. At the risk of offending someone, I can’t compare the experience of having a dog with having kids that I can’t have.
Thank Og I have the SDMB so I can make sure I keep my handbook for childless coupes updated. :rolleyes:
SSG Schwartz
Wait, you can’t do this with kids?
I think it’s offensive and kind of ridiculous to compare the emotional experience of having a child to that of having a pet, and as a person with lots of pets and no desire for children, I’m careful to avoid such comparisons.
But what I’m not sure about is whether it’s OK to tell dog stories in response to kid stories. If your kid did something funny, and you tell me about it, and it reminds me of something funny my dog did, is it offensive to tell my dog story? Because generally I will, but I really do try not to offend people (at least nice people), but I don’t have any funny kid stories, you know? But I have some lovely, silly dogs.
I only find it really offensive if people are talking about the death of kids vs pets, and even then only if someone in the conversation has actually lost a child. Especially if the pet died at the end of its natural lifespan.
People who fling their pets around aren’t very good pet owners, although I’m sure some people do that.
People who fling their kids around aren’t very good parents, and I know that some people do that as well.
It seems like overstating your case to compare good parents to bad pet owners.
I realize you were just looking for a quick analogy, but I think that’s a pretty terrible one. A gay marriage IS fundamentally equivalent to a straight marriage; it’s commitment to another human being. Pet ownership is vaguely similar, but fundamentally different, from parenthood.
That said, in response to the OP, I don’t find it offensive, it’s just ignorance.
I love my dogs dearly, and generally prefer the company of dogs to that of humans, but, when one developed a cyst dangling from his butt that would cost $750 to fix, I patted his head and said, “Sorry, bro, but you’re not worth $750.” You can’t do that with kids.
But our puppy took an interest in it and fixed it right up. Puppy teeth are way sharp. We call him Dr. Dog.
ewww
I call my tomcat Bert, “Baby”. So no, I don’t find it offensive, and neither (I think) does he!
Q
To be fair, people that train their cats with water squirt bottles can be good pet owners, but people that train their children with water squirt bottles are not good parents.
I don’t know what that means, but clearly there is behavior that is acceptable towards an animal that would not be acceptable toward a child.
I have adopted two cats and one baby girl. I can speak for my personal experience FWIW, but I used to think of caring for my cats as some kind of preparation for parenthood.
After I had my daughter in my arms for five seconds, I knew this was something profoundly different. And more profound than being in love, which was another thing I used to think would be of the same emotional depth. Boy was I wrong.
Most people consider me to be a way over-involved cat person. Our cats are spoiled rotten. But when I think of what I would do if there is a fire in our house, I can only think of my daughter. The cats don’t even register. Instinctively.
My brother and SIL are major cat people. They have no children and will never have them. They refer to their cats as their children of the feline persuasion (they aren’t joking). My other siblings and in-laws get upset with them. My wife and I don’t. We used to think the same way. Now we know that we were nuts. But there is no way to know that you are nuts (IMHO) without actually going through the parenting process.
I am not even sure ignorance is the right word here.
Ignorance implies there is a some fact or knowledge that you could know or should know.
A person who has no children can’t really KNOW what its like to have one, almost by definition.
Lack of experience IMHO is a better descriptor than “ignorance”
Unless of course a person is claiming that the two are totally equivalent.
And as for being offended :rolleyes: