Posted on 04/19/2019 8:31:03 AM PDT by Stravinsky
About three months after I’d given birth, I was invited to a recently-befriended mum’s house for a gathering of new parents and babies. As my bleary brain tried desperately to remember each adult’s name, and at least the gender of their corresponding tot, I suddenly realised we were one cooing, spewing infant short of a full set. How odd.
Later, as I happened on the lady I’d identified as childless refilling her mug in the kitchen, I inquired about the “little one”, wholly prepared to praise her willingness to leave him or her with someone else at such a young age. The tiny dote, she explained, was indeed with a neighbour. I gave her an encouraging smile. Then she got out her phone and proudly showed me a snapshot of her bundle of joy, on Instagram, of course. Blinking into the sun from the comfort of his very own swaddle, Buster was the smuggest schnauzer I’d ever seen.
Buster, it turns out, was just over two months old – a true “fur baby” in advanced social media parlance – and his doe-eyed owner assured us that she was just as consumed with sleep training and feeding regimes as we were. It was only when chatter turned to nipple cream, and how it serves wonderfully as lip balm, that her contributions to the conversation dried up.
Buster’s owner is among a growing breed of young people opting for pets over kids as the burden of raising a tiny human is losing its appeal for commitment-phobic, cash-strapped, travel-obsessed or simply career-prioritising millennials. Government data published this week shows that, for the first time since the ONS began collecting data, more women are getting pregnant in their 30s than in their 20s.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Fur baby is a way of saying “If my pet dies, I want the same level of pity as if your child dies”.
I love mini doxies and have had three, one of each coat type.
My wire-haired one suffered from occasional seizures, inherent in the breed. I don’t know if her coat type had them exclusively or if all minis are susceptible. The first time she seized, it scared me to death.
But by the time I got her to the emergency vet, she was just fine. So if your fur kid seizes, don’t panic. A vet can bring the seizure down, but the pup will come out of it on its own in ten minutes or so.
The good news is, at least these millenials are acknowledging their limitations by not having children they’re unwilling to provide for.
The bad news is, they’re aborting them while anthropomorphising their animals.
Some young people actually take their cats for walks around town in $300 baby strollers & wake up numerous times during the night to attend to their “feeding schedule.”
They dress up their cats in little outfits— or engage in earnest online debates as to whether or not doing so constitutes animal cruelty, with various “cat psychologists” weighing in on the subject.
They create Facebook & Instagram accounts for their cats with huge followings & compete for product endorsements. The humans’ entire lives revolve around taking & posting cutesy photos on these pages.
They have meetups in “cat cafes” where cats are welcome to dine along with their humans.
They host weekend “play dates” with other “cat parents.”
But alas, come Monday morning, the “babies” are left alone to fend for themselves, while “Hu-mom” & “Catdaddy” go off to work.
My family does have 1 cat & I confess I became morbidly fascinated with this online phenomenon for a few weeks. But finally snapped, realizing how bizarre it all is.
What I got out of the article was the people in question going beyond "liking" pets to using them as substitutes for children.
and who created the Government school system?
When people balk at accepting the kind of responsibility inherent in the creation of families and the rearing of children, they often seek political substitutes such as environmentalism to fill the void in their lives.
This is really big in Japan and San Fran, where there are more dogs than kids.
The very saddest is when you see an actual baby buggy made for a small human approaching, pushed by some woman.
Then as it passes you see a DOG inside.
It has the effect of underscoring what was INTENDED to be inside but is NOT.
How do you know the woman didn’t have kids
who outgrew the stroller so she used it for the pup?
The libs took it over.
You raise a fair question:
Because the overall fertility is less than 1.2 kids per family and schools are closing all over the place.
And Japan is weirder another way:
At the same time that there is more and more porn, there are also more and more reports of young people simply NEVER having sex at all.
I hear all time time about 25 y.o. virgins, 30 y.o. virgins.
Twenty years ago I would laughed, 100% disbelieving those accounts.
More and more sex is, strangely, for professionals.
The one government “give-away” I believe is becoming necessary is tax abatements and cash stipends for third, fourth, and more children born normallly (Caesarian acceptable) to normal married couples; to be reduced or terminated with divorce. I believe that it as an existential thing. Russia is doing something like that and seems to have got a start on turning its population decline around and Hungary has begun.
ack! I hate the term fur baby.
Another plus is having a dog doesn't give the owner 'stretch marks' or a fat gut.
The woman is a coward and a disgrace to her gender
Couple of weeks later, she misses another 2-3 days. I talked to her, and asked why. "My baby is sick again." I'm not a monster so I let it slide. Kids get sick, been there, done that.
Couple of weeks later, she calls in sick again. Day #2, I call her up. "My baby is sick again.", is the excuse I get.
I commiserate, and I'm more than a bit concerned. "Jeez, that's three times in the past few weeks. What's the doc say? Is everything OK? What's the matter? Etc etc etc".
Long silence on the other end of the line... "Well, technically...... ...... .... it's my FUR BABY. He's been throwing up a little."
Turned out that she was missing all this time because her ferret had a tummyache. I told her that I expected to see her back at work in the morning. She didn't like that, not one bit.
She didn't last long at the job after that.
At least you don’t have to worry about your dog deciding to be a different gender.
BTW, in an unpopular opinion, I’m kind of against the idea of people owning pets. A majority of them really don’t understand what these animals really want, how they are intended to live, and so they get convinced they are giving the pet all the things they need.
A dog does not want to be sitting in a pen all day, and see the outside only in brief periods on a leash, or to poop.
Exactly. If they were truly afraid of responsibility; they would never get a pet. Especially a dog or multiple dogs. They are a huge responsibility and take a lot of work. Besides; kids aren't for everyone. Look at this world! Especially the cities where most the jobs are. If someone can't afford to rear their child in a good neighborhood and send them to a good school; who knows what will happen to them. Maybe the next crazy mass killer who creates some kind of biological virus that kills millions because he got beat up in school or the mean girls were mean to her.
Some women get dogs to help them get over the guilt of an abortion.
Can be pleasant indeed! I have a year-old English Setter and he is one of the top three joys of my life.
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