"My dogs are loyal beasts. They would never hurt me..."
Posted on 08/06/2021 6:51:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Replacing babies with pets stifles a person’s capacity to give and receive love, as it wrongly directs our greatest earthly affections toward ourselves.
In a recent Fox News piece, sociologist Andrea Laurent-Simpson writes of the emergence of “multispecies families,” explaining that in “child-free families…dogs and cats paw in to fill a longing to nurture” and would-be grandparents “readily shift over to spoiling the granddog as their daughters and sons choose instead to pursue lucrative careers.” But this is neither good nor new.
The ancient historian Plutarch began his life of Pericles with an anecdote about Caesar, who, upon seeing “wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them” asked, “if the women in their country did not bear children.” Plutarch thought this a “princely” rebuke of “those who squander on animals that proneness to love and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men.”
Another ancient text tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. There is certainly nothing new about treating pets as substitutes for children, though it does seem to be more common of late, a trend that debases us and deforms our pets — literally in some cases. The overbreeding of dogs has, for instance, produced breeds that struggle to breathe or routinely need C-sections to give birth. If these people love dogs, then it is with a selfish and consumerist sort of love.
Of course, we ought to love our pets. But this love must be directed to them as the animals they are, rather than as mere objects for our amusement, or as substitutes for children. I love my dogs and try to take good care of them. They were bred to be loveable, and they are entertaining and affectionate. And they have a place in family life. With the right training and supervision, dogs and kids are great for each other. My daughter really, really loves our dogs. Notably, neither she nor the dogs are confused about who is the human. That sort of disordered affection requires an adult.
Pets may be valuable companions to the lonely and childless, but it is perverse to make this palliative measure into a preference, deliberately rejecting children in favor of a pampered pet. Dogs are capable of giving and receiving affection, but there is a point past which the personalities that enthusiastic owners ascribe to them are anthropomorphic projections. In such cases, pets are treated like animate dolls — repositories of the interpersonal needs and longings of their owners. The substitution of pets for people thereby stifles a person’s capacity to give and receive love, as it wrongly directs our greatest earthly affections toward ourselves.
The proliferation of twee “dog moms” and “fur babies” and “grandpuppies” illustrates American self-indulgence and cultural decadence. Marriage and birth rates are declining as people abandon the basic biological imperative of pairing off and having children. Filling the interpersonal void with dogs is an understandable response to this.
But what we need are other persons. We are, in important ways, incomplete and not fully human on our own. As Aristotle long ago noted, man is a social animal, and a man who can live without others must be either a beast or a god — people who don’t need people aren’t really people.
The Christian may add that in exceptional circumstances or vocations a few people may need to rely entirely on animal companionship and the person of God, but there is no good reason to deliberately turn to beasts in place of persons.
Trying to turn pets into substitute children gives the game away. It is the very old trick of having one’s cake and eating it too. This substitution is an attempt to satisfy the human longings to love and nurture new persons, and to be loved by them in turn, without the labor, responsibility and risk of having children. But there is no substituting for the human person, and even the best of pets is only a shadow of a copy of the reality of human family.
The difference is one of depth. The mature and the wise have pleasures and satisfactions, as well as pains, of which the childish and foolish know nothing. Parenting requires much more self-giving and self-sacrifice than having a pet, but it also provides a fuller and more substantial life. The best dog in the world is nothing compared to the begetting of a new person through the loving union of a mother and father united for life and dedicated to the care of their children.
But for many, this increasingly seems like an impossible ideal. It is easy to direct (deserved) opprobrium at the apostles of the “child-free interspecies family” lifestyle, but this does little to help those who feel that a stable marriage and children are out of reach. Thus, we must work, culturally and politically, to make it easier for people to form and maintain families, and for those who remain single to still be involved in family life. If we do not do this, we may find our nation literally going to the dogs.
I ate dog. Tasted like spiced meat. Wet, saucy bbq. I didn’t know until later. It wasn’t bad, and it was thoroughly cooked.
A formal meal needs an appetizer.
Lol, I always told my children that when SHTF, we eat the dog first.
I’ve humanized my rat terror’s stuffed animals. “Get your baby” which she does then violently shakes it, tosses it in the air then rips the stuffing out of it.
"My dogs are loyal beasts. They would never hurt me..."
——a miniature Chihuahua-—
Ahhh..... I’m sure that’s what they have. It is so small, it gets lost on the uncut grass.
Bookmark
“Sadly, today while pets are getting more traditional names, actual kids are being given more & more stupid names”
The way kids today are being raised and educated, it might be appropriate. Pets are getting smarter and the kids being uniformed better.
An example of this is this article:
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2020/01/functional-illiteracy/
When a third of the students in a state school system can’t read competitively, there is a problem with instruction or it is being done on purpose. And it doesn’t get fixed either as:
In California, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reports that more than half of adult inmates are functionally illiterate. Proves just how effective the school system is and that it is not being assisted. Keep the kids at home, teach them yourself, and send the pets to school.
wy69
Same, except we had Dobermans (still do, in fact).
It’s just too hot for any of the shepherd-type dogs.
Need thin bodies and short hair.
Probably a good strategy, then you will have all that dog food to eat.
I only have edible pets.
My children are grown. They were raised with pets and developed responsibility and the ability to love beyond themselves. I don’t have grandchildren yet and my kids live halfway around the world from me. I have a cat. I love her very much. It isn’t an either/or thing. There is enough love to go around. Tired of the need to create division where there is none.
I might just fatten him up until the kibble runs out and then grill him.
I understand the premise, but the fix is dumb. People who don’t want children should be pressured into having them? Raising kids is hard enough if you WANT them.
When you mentioned asps, I started to think of Cleopatra.
Did she use them as a murder weapon?
I heard about a garter snake who was offered a part in a Cleopatra movie but he turned it down because he didn’t want to make an asp of himself.
What the author doesn’t seem to get is the difference between childless and child free.
And there is a difference.
And as long as the pets are loved and well cared for, far better the child free have pets instead of kids.
And for folks fortunate to have both furry and human family who are well-loved, I’d say that’s pretty close to Heaven.
“People who don’t want children should be pressured into having them?”
My wife and I both instinctively knew we never wanted kids from an early age. We both lost past loves over the no kids thing.
We were pressured by both sets of parents. Thankfully we never gave in.
We love our 4 fur babies.
The author is a male, who is probably not even married. You can not expect him to get it. If the author were a woman, that would be a different story.
My oldest brother and his wife had one son. My second oldest brother loved children but his wife didn’t want any. So they didn’t have any. My sister-in-law got Breast Cancer. They removed her breasts, but the cancer moved to her brain and that is what she died of. He got ill of Alzheimer’s and that is what he died of in 2014.
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