Yeah. My mom was a reasonably good parent to me and my three siblings. She is absolutely worthless as a pet owner, however. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that it’s amazing nobody called Animal Control on her for the treatment of the two dogs my family owned as a child.
Childless, past-owner of pets.
No, I don’t think it’s offensive to compare having a pet and having a child, but I do find it rather silly. When I’ve had cats, I would cringe a bit when people called me the cat’s mother. No, his mother was a barn cat who licked his butt. I’m the owner the feeds, pets and is at the beck and call of the cat.
On the other hand, some friends of ours got a puppy and then a couple of years later had a child. The conversations revolving around poop, food, and being kept up all night were amazingly similar.
I don’t have any children, I have one cat, and hell, I love my nieces and nephew more than I love my cat. Well, maybe not more per se, but definitely differently - that love is stronger, deeper, and more meaningful than what I feel for my kitty. I love Tosha, but she is a pet - there’s limits for how far I’ll go for her, while I’d do anything for my nieces and nephew.
I think plenty of children would be better off had their parents practiced with a pet. Really, while it may be offensive to some parents to compare the two (though, really, how is this being brought up? ‘My kid did this’ conversations with the childless, to which they can add little to nothing?), getting a dog (and, IMHO, to a lesser extent a cat) is a huge step for couples. They’ve got to adjust their schedules, budget for vet bills, have in-depth discussions about bodily functions, worry when they leave the rotter for the first time. It can be borderline creepy to outsiders, but really, who cares?
I don’t show my dog photos of their grandparents because they are dogs, not humans, and they don’t understand photos. However, since I am currently on my fifth generation of my own breeding, I can look at any of my dogs and think “I made him/her”.
So those who adopt will never feel the way about their children as you do about yours?
Please don’t go there. The childfree as just as mature as any random parent, and in many cases, more so.
Love your child instead of having pets, you are still not the sort of pet owner that I, and thousands of others, are.
There is no way for you to know that since you are not me. It’s like the people that cheapen their marriages by saying they didn’t know love until they had a baby. Were I that spouse, I would have a serious second look at my mate.
There is no waiting room at the vet’s office.
The thing is, how do you know? 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. I become more attached to my dogs and cat as time goes on. I have made many sacrifices and provide them with the best I possibly can.
If nothing else, simply becoming a parent does not guarantee one will love that child any more than getting a kitten will guarantee one will love it.
Most of us are smart enough to not have children when we realise we prefer kittens to babies. 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. They are simply wired differently.
Far too many parents get pets as something to have until the children come. People who actually love their pets do not simply get rid of a pet because someone is allergic. I’ve been allergic to dogs, cats, pollen, dust mites and essentially anything I can snuffle up all of my life, yet I currently have three dogs, a cat and a garden that I take care of (as well as a messy house…)
Heh, just listen to what others are saying in this thread. I’ve known many parents, and the vast majority (well, all as far as I know) love their kids more than their pet hamster, bunny or cat.
There are some people who irrationally hate their children admittedly - and even abuse and murder them; they are what we call “disfunctional”.
For most people, that isn’t the case. We are generally wired to love our own children - there are evolutionary reasons for this.
To my mind, a person (man or woman) who does not love their own children has issues. There is “something wrong with them”. May not be any moral fault to them, of course. They are “wired differently” and their wiring is faulty.
You can risk your own health as you see fit, of course. Do you seriously believe it is morally right to risk certain health consequences to your own child, knowing as a result of tests that the child is seriously allergic to the pet, because you love that pet?
Here’s the problem as I see it. Love, as some have intimated upthread, is not exclusive to parenthood. I love my dogs more than your kids, if I had kids, I’d love them more than my dogs. I don’t have kids and don’t want them. That’s my choice. I don’t treat my dogs like kids but if I wanted to, that’s also my choice. If you’re offended by my choices, or my equating my love for my dogs to that of your kids, then it’s your love for your kids that I call into question.
If something so basic, so human that’s supposed to be automatic within a parent is challenged by the innocent views or practices of someone else, I’d say you’re not as confident in your love for your child as you think you are. It’s rather like the gay marriage debate; gay marriage has ZERO impact on straight marriage just as a person loving their pets as children has ZERO impact on the love of a parent for a child.
Shoe’s on the other foot and you don’t like it?
Brilliant formulation.
It can be, but it’s not always.
Okay, more specific example. One night, my husband was with our daughter and I was away for the weekend. She (our daughter) got sick; vomiting, wheezing, pretty dramatic sick. He was beside himself with worry. He did manage to give her a nebulizer treatment, but that only lessened the wheezing. He’s never raised an infant, and so what he really, really wanted was for me to come home right now, only my cell phone wasn’t in a service area, so he couldn’t get in touch with me.
His friend, let’s call her Elaine, who had come over thinking they were going out to dinner, was pissed off that the sick child spoiled their plans. She didn’t want to accept that a babysitter couldn’t reasonably be expected to babysit a child this ill for something as frivolous as dinner, and that the child really needed a parent around right now - Mommy preferably, but Daddy would have to do. Elaine brought up her cat, telling him that the kid would be fine if they left; her cat was sick once, but she was just fine after a few nights. 
They decided to rent a movie and order pizza instead, and Elaine spent most of the evening complaining when the movie had to be paused so Daddy could console the fussy toddler. Then, to top it all off, she had the gall to demand that he drive her to the train station (about a mile away) when the evening was over. When he told her no way, she threw a fit and told him just to bundle the kid up and put her in the carseat. When he said he wasn’t taking a sick toddler out, Elaine started in on the cat thing again - she knew he was worried, 'cause sometimes her cat gets sick, but he was overreacting, he was spoiling her, he just needed to get over it. When he offered to pay for a cab instead, she continued to call his parenting into question - again, justifying her opinions based on the fact that she has a cat and it’s *exactly *the same. Not similar, not the best she could relate it to, but exactly the same. Her words.
That’s all kinds of obnoxious and offensive. Equating a sick, scared toddler with a cat that you can just plunk into a cat carrier and take with you at your convenience* is offensive. Telling a person that he’s a lousy parent because you wouldn’t make the same choices for your cat is ridiculous. And of course it had an impact on him; he was furious and didn’t speak to her for the better part of a year. He was furious with me for being out of touch - and while he was self-aware enough to know that he was riled up a few extra notches because of Elaine, it didn’t prevent the fight we got into on my return, so her behavior affected me, as well.
Two weeks ago was the first time he returned her calls, and when he tried to clean up old business, the same argument started up again; she still sees his offer to call her a cab and stay with his sick child as bad, selfish parenting because that’s not what she would do with her cat.
*and, actually, I wouldn’t do that to a sick cat, either!
I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. One does not own any other human being, regardless if one gave birth to him. My cat belongs to me, as in I paid for him – he’s mine. He is a piece of property. A living, breathing, personality-filled piece of property that I love a lot, but make no mistake … I own him.
I don’t, on the other hand, “own” my kids.
It’s just utterly ridiculous to float that as some sort of comparison.
This women is not the sort being discussed here though. If she truly equated her cat with being her child, she wouldn’t have a problem with staying in for a night taking care of a kid. When ANYTHING under your care is that sick, you don’t leave them alone when they’re that bad off.
Small clarification, I get that she was saying a child is not different then her cat…but it’s rather clear that she has no idea how to properly care for either.
I agree.
ETA: And, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s not insulting when people claim their love is as great. How does one quantify love, after all? That falls under the amusingly naive bit for me, but not insulting. What’s insulting is when (as Elaine did), someone wants a parent to treat their kid as shabbily as they treat their pet.
This is it. Elaine’s rather worthless as a caretaker.
It isn’t a question of “challenged”, but of finding the comparison silly.
Like someone said above, an airline pilot is not “challenged” as to the inherent worth of their piloting abilities if someone claims that it takes just as much skill to pilot a 747 as to peddle a tricycle. They just roll their eyes. They KNOW that it takes more skill to pilot a 747.
curlcoat, would you die for your pets? Would you kill a person for them?
Listen to what I said, as well as others. There are different levels of intensity in pet owners just as there are in parents. You are aware that there are children born to people who never really get attached to that child?
And? I wasn’t wired that way, which doesn’t make me disfunctional at all. I was wired to have what appears to me to be the same reaction to a baby kitten that most women have to a baby human, as well as all of the other ways that people react to their children I do with my dogs and cat. Simply because it is (supposedly) more common for women to be wired to unconditionally love their children doesn’t mean that those who are not wired that way are disfuntional. And if nothing else, being wired to not want to reproduce in an overly crowded environment is also an evolutionary thing…
You are welcome to your opinions but you are wrong. These people are simply different, not faulty. It is tragic when these folks bow to pressure to have children, but that is the only thing “wrong” with that picture.
Treating allergies instead of eliminating the allergen is not risking anyone’s health. The opposite is actually true - one is usually not allergic to just one thing, so trying to ignore the issue by unloading the pets just means the child has to put up with the reactions to other things until the parents finally decide to quit avoiding the issue.
When I was a wee little boy growing up in Central Texas, I had a sweet old sorrel gelding named Rusty. For several years trusty Rusty was my best buddy, and I saw him as an intelligent, dignified, emotionally advanced confidante with his own thoughts, opinions and agenda.
Then I grew up.
Over the course of a summer, I came to realize that Rusty, no matter how much I loved him, was just a horse, and everything I had interpreted as expressions of thoughts, opinions and emotions were simply Rusty doing what a horse does.
No matter how much some may want it, animals are NOT people, and I DO find it annoying when someone compares animal ownership to parenting. I’m fairly certain that when it happens their intent isn’t to offend, so I usually don’t say anything (but I give 'em a look that says, “…are you just fucking crazy?!”)