this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Honestly, that doesn't make it much better. I always viewed the cats my family used to have as family members, but they were anything but children.
The way @captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works put it captures it quite nicely. They rely on their owners for certain things, but they are not children and their personalities do not match that.
Referring to them a such gives me the ick because a) it infantilizes beings which, well, simply aren't children, b) at the same time humanizes them too much. And, paradoxically, c) makes me think of the kind of people who carry dogs around in their handbags and essentially treat them more like plushies rather than actual living beings. Just doesn't sit right with me.
I think the objection to the term is fine, you don't have to see yourself as a parent or your pet as your kids. It's an imperfect analogy for familial closeness and caregiving role--im sure other terms have their advantages. I was more suggesting an explanation for why it makes sense for some people, especially those who adopt puppies. After all, parents to human children stay parents regardless of the children's age... Which gets to the semantic hiccup behind this disagreement, there are two usages of child, one usage denotes familial relationship and social role, and one denotes age. I'm not a child, but I am the child of my parents.
Words are socially constructed, develop new meanings, and vary between cultures. Pet parent might be a new definition distinct from biological parent. Some people feel comfortable calling every family friend of their parents' generation auntie/uncle and others find it weird because it defies their blood-relation conception of the term. That's okay. Live and Let live.
Though, I think comparing the analogy of pets as children to treating pets as plushies says more about how you view children than anything :P