I am a guardian of a 10 yr old boy, and the relationship is very different then that of my pet. I don’t consider my cat as my child, but sort of a co-inhabiter of this space which I call my home. That is not to say it’s a cold and distant relationship, but a respectful on where I know my cat has her own cat environment and her things to do in her cat world and is a ‘adult’ capable of making her own decisions about such things.
No.
The terms furbabies, animal guardians, and other such, I find repellent.
I am very attached to my animals but they are animals and I own them. They are not my children. I am not their parent.
I have two children so I am a parent. I have two cats that I adore but I am not their father and they are not my children.
I have human children and a dog. I like my dog a lot, but it’s not even close to the relationship with my children, so much so that the term “pet parent” seems strange.
No. We have a daughter that we are parents to, but the many cats we’ve had and still have are pets. Even if we do talk about Pepper Mill being “The Momcat”, or imagine the cats referring to her as “Mom” (I’m certainly not “The Dadcat”)
Cats aren’t little furry people, they’re cats.
That’s not a put-down, it’s just a recognition that they and their little walnut-sized brains work differently.
I have 3 children. Oh, make that 4 kids: the red headed step-child is 32 years old. He may end up outliving us. None of the kids really want him but one of them will take him after we’re both gone. Especially if we put a proviso in our wills that whoever takes him gets whatever house we had. Cockatoos have been known to live to be 80 to 100 years.
I call myself momma to my 3 Chihuahuas and they know the phrase “Daddy’s home”.
Of the 3 cats one used to call me “Meowma” when he was a youngster. At about age 3 he stopped.
It is truly insulting to animals to be treated like children. They are not children, however we choose to infantilize them. They are adults – adult animals.
I am the slave to my Pet masters. There is no other way to describe it. With my human offspring I eventually taught them to be self sufficient and able to carry out directions or commands. Not so lucky with pets. These guys will be in my house til death parts us. My children have all left me. 
ETA the Lil’wrekker still comes home occasionally asking for more money.
Parent and pet parent. I tell my kid that the cat is his sister and the dog is his brother. Mostly we are just ridiculous, which I think counts as a good thing.
I never had kids so I’ve never thought of myself as a parent but I jokingly refer to myself as the “mommy” of the dog and cats. I feel more like an owner, though.
I’m in my fiifties and have gone through lots of dogs and cats over the years but I’ve always considered them family and treated them as such.
On of my coolest dogs was D-Day. He looked like a chow mixed with something else. My friend found two puppies huddled together in the dark on a road as she was driving to work early. She called me to ask me if I wanted one. I already had a few pets at the time so I said no but she kept on until I finally said okay bring him over and let me see and then I’ll decide. So she pulls up and knocks on my door. I open the door and she shoved the puppy in my arms and ran as fast as she could back to her car and peeled out of the driveway like she was on fire. I had him until he died of old age, he was awesome.
Parent and pet owner … if my child got sick, I’d tell the doctor spare no expense … the vet says $10,000, I’m euthanizing …
I raised my children to be independent and live their own lives as they see fit … pets are property, we own them, there’s laws against setting them free to live independently …
Parent of kids and pet owner, but if you want to call me a pet parent that’s okay. I used to refer to my son’s very spoiled cats as my grandkitties.
When I was trying to deal with the fact that $6,000 was more than I could justify spending to give my dog a possible year or two more, my gf pointed out that we could each afford $3,000. So we did. And it worked out.
Years later we put $5,000 into another dogs stifle. Again, $2500 each was doable.
My kids always had their medical needs covered by insurance, so I never had to consider euthanasia…
As I mentioned before, we called ourselves mommy and daddy wrt our dogs, kids called them their brother/sister…but it wasn’t entirely serious. A lot of the responses seem to assume it generally is 100% serious. There are always extremes but I wonder how common among all ‘pet parents’ it is to literally view the pet as equal to their human kids. And if you don’t have real kids, you don’t know that’s like (just observing others or remembering being a kid is not the same IME) so you can’t even really say if intensely loving you pet is the same.
Nothing wrong with intensely loving one’s pets, we really did, recent passing of our second dog has been rough, maybe more than the first one years ago. What a great girl.
As to medical care, another factor is the pet’s ability to aid in its own care and its lack of worry about its own mortality, which is part of the reason we go to the lengths we do for fellow humans*. We did expensive surgery for recent dog to address a non-life threatening issue. Then a life threatening one came soon after, either coincidentally or perhaps a complication. Part of the decision then was how rough the previous treatment was on a creature with limited understanding. So we decided no more, and had her euthanized (it would have been invasive to even find out exactly what was causing her symptoms, maybe a stroke, maybe a brain tumor and long odds to cure it if so). But again at that point it’s time for seriousness as opposed to the playful expression of our genuine love for her in calling ourselves her mommy and daddy. It was not IMO a question of us thinking she was really a baby human then changing our minds when looking at big vet bills.
I think often people like to feel good about how reasonable they are compared to supposed unreasonableness of other people. And that comes out in backlash against ‘pet parent’ idea.
*not in every single case of course, some people are too young or too sick already to understand their situation but get treatment. But the general rules we adhere to evolved in part IMO from putting ourselves in the place of sick people, we generally want to be treated, because we look forward to future life, and fear death. A dog doesn’t suffer from fear of the abstract future the way we do.
I don’t have kids- we have four dogs and 2 cats. I hate the term pet parent though I guess it’s harmless enough. Until I switched careers, I worked at vet hospitals over the years and one in particular I was forced to do that “your baby is ready”. Ugh… not only is it childish and dumb, but I feel it’s actually disrespectful of the animal. Dogs and Cats are pretty incredible beings (and so are babies, though I don’t have one) - they are not child substitutes. I don’t have them instead of children- I just happened not to have kids. People like to assume all kinds of things about that too…
Same thing about children, there’s laws against setting them free to live independently
I would never think of myself as a “pet parent,” and while I am usually uninterested in correcting people’s language for them, I think this is one of the few areas where I’d push back if someone called me that. No offense to the dog, but her “parent” I am most certainly not.
We have two cats we raised from day old kittens, bottle fed them, etc. They follow us around like dogs. So they consider us their parents, they never knew their mother.
So yeah. But we almost never use the term "furbabies’ or call them our “kids” except in jest.
But we *are *their parents, in a way.
Parent and pet owner, one cat and two dogs.
I don’t hate “pet parent” as much at as I loathe “fur baby”, but I don’t use the phrase myself. My mom does call my dogs her granddogs and that’s fine with me.
I am thankful that all of the vets on Sonny’s medical team and their staff refer to him as Sonny and not my “baby” or “fur kid” or whatever. And yeah, I’m totally not into euthanizing an otherwise healthy dog because he’s going to cost me some money, hence the medical team (regular vet, orthopedist, liver specialist)…We call him the Six Million Dollar Dog. We haven’t spent quite that much, but he does have two very fancy knees.
Parent and pet owner. I don’t feel like my dog’s parent and I doubt my dog sees me as his parent. Dogs are instinctually pack animals. Our family is his pack. I do think he sees me as the alpha dog of the pack however.