Do Americans love pets too much?

We're choosing pets over children.

By Gary Bauer

from the May 31, 2007 edition

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Washington - Here's a sad story with a bizarre twist: Last year, a 6-year-old girl was accidentally strangled to death by her family pet, a golden retriever. Such animals are usually euthanized, but in this case, the dog was treated to an all-expenses paid trip to an animal center in California.

There, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, "a team of pet advocates saw to the dog's every need: Behaviorists assessed its personality, a doggie foster family took the animal home at night to ease its feelings of loss, and more than 250 people applied to adopt the dog."

Why did the parents show so much mercy for the animal that killed their daughter? Apparently, said the center's public relations manager, they "did not want to lose another one of their children."

It's but one (extreme) example of a disturbing trend in America: care for pets is exceeding normal affection and treading into the realm of exaltation. We're treating animals as humans, and in some cases preferring pets to people. But an excess of affection per se isn't the problem – it's the lopsided moral framework that it reveals.

In the United States, 63 percent of households include a pet (up 7 percent since 1988), and pet lovers spent $38.5 billion on their pets in 2006 (up from $21 billion a decade earlier). Americans now spend several billion dollars more on dog and cat food than they do on baby food. And the pet healthcare industry is booming.

So, what's behind the increased affinity for animals?

It's partly due to the growing share of people choosing pets over children.

Census Bureau data reveal that the proportion of childless women 15 to 44 years old reached an all-time high of 45 percent in 2004. Moreover, he National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of women who choose to be "child-free" has swelled 160 percent in a generation.

Both singles and couples without children are more likely to own pets and are significantly more likely to develop strong, even parental bonds with them. In San Francisco, pet owners – "pet guardians" according to city ordinance – outnumber children nearly 2 to 1.

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