It’s also off-putting when veterinary staff do it. I get that it’s easier than remembering the human client’s name, but I’m not my dog’s mom, for several reasons:
I’m not a woman. Y’all are just misgendering me.
He’s a son of a bitch, not a human
If he was the son of a human, that human was my grandma. I took him in after her death. That makes him my half-uncle.
I like “human”. I’ll ask strange dogs at the dog park “where is your human?”
I do similar to strange children that look lost at the grocery store–“where is your grown-up?” (I don’t want to assume their family structure, and an adult talking to them usually causes them to dash back to their adult. Doesn’t work the same way with dogs, tbh.)
Do you also feel uncomfortable when people use the words adopt and foster when it comes to pets? They’re also child-related words but I feel like those aren’t as controversial to people.
Freud is regarded as the “father of psychiatry” and Aristotle as the “father of biology.” Plenty of people who invented or had significant contributions to their field are considered “father/mother”
Good point. What if the word was mother or father instead of mom and dad? There are definitely more generalized uses of that, like fatherland or mother nature.
I adopted my cat in her old age. She’s…someteen years old. I don’t actually know, her known history starts when she, an adult cat, followed my cousin’s dog in through the dog door and demanded tuna. Like 13 years later my cousin passed away and I had room for her now ownerless cat.
I did no parenting to this cat. I am more a pillow than a parent to Izzy. I am her caretaker, she is dependent on me for her food, water and safety, but she isn’t a child, and I didn’t raise her.
It is weird for the traditional view of pets as property, beasts of labour, ornaments, or other living in-person. However recent decades has seen a popular shift towards treating select sentient animals (experience emotions) with some degree of sapience (reasoning/higher cognition), like cats and dogs, as people. Humans treat them as individual persons with their own subjective experience, desires, and lives worth living.
So when a human adopts a non-human animal under this view, they are also taking on the responsibility to care for the animal’s needs and we’ll-being, not just for what the animal provides the human (as would be the case of a beast of burden) but primarily for the sake of the animal’s own worthwhile life–the human takes on a guardianship/parental role. This is why people are more and more being referred to as mom/dad/parent of their pet. More and more people are adopting animals as non-human children. Vets like to enforce it because it reduces animal cruelty and makes people more likely to do basic care.
This isn’t to say many farmers don’t try to give their animals a good life or recognize them as feeling beings with their own personality. They do, but not to the same degree as treating a pet as a non-human child.
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 @[email protected] 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
Am I the only one who finds it really weird when people refer to themselves as mom or dad of their pets? Yikes
Fun fact: every dog have, in fact, a real mom that’s actually a dog and their separation was most likely non consensual.
What a bitch.
Yes
No…
I have pets and I find it weird.
It’s also off-putting when veterinary staff do it. I get that it’s easier than remembering the human client’s name, but I’m not my dog’s mom, for several reasons:
I know vet techs who would love it if you introduced yourself as your dogs’s half nephew. That’s hilarious.
Vet tech got real pissy because I said my cat was more of a lazy roommate.
I’m not the father. It did not come out of me.
well okay that one time she decided to put her head in my mouth doesn’t count
My dogs were not siblings of each other. They were roommates forced together by circumstances.
“Hi, I’m here with Elvis. He’s my half-uncle on my mom’s side.”
I prefer it to “owner”
I like “human”. I’ll ask strange dogs at the dog park “where is your human?”
I do similar to strange children that look lost at the grocery store–“where is your grown-up?” (I don’t want to assume their family structure, and an adult talking to them usually causes them to dash back to their adult. Doesn’t work the same way with dogs, tbh.)
I like Human as well. I think I’d use that over mum/dad/owner
First off, it’s “Lord of the House, first in his name”.
Do you also feel uncomfortable when people use the words adopt and foster when it comes to pets? They’re also child-related words but I feel like those aren’t as controversial to people.
Because those words are not just for children.
Like early-adopters is about new technology. And fostering can be about pride.
But mom and dad is only in relation to a child in a family. Never a pet.
It is about a pet quite often, hence this discussion…
Father of invention
Mother of dragons
Freud is regarded as the “father of psychiatry” and Aristotle as the “father of biology.” Plenty of people who invented or had significant contributions to their field are considered “father/mother”
Never a pet? Isn’t the thing that they were annoyed about, that it always happens with pets?
Good point. What if the word was mother or father instead of mom and dad? There are definitely more generalized uses of that, like fatherland or mother nature.
I adopted my cat in her old age. She’s…someteen years old. I don’t actually know, her known history starts when she, an adult cat, followed my cousin’s dog in through the dog door and demanded tuna. Like 13 years later my cousin passed away and I had room for her now ownerless cat.
I did no parenting to this cat. I am more a pillow than a parent to Izzy. I am her caretaker, she is dependent on me for her food, water and safety, but she isn’t a child, and I didn’t raise her.
I feel the same about my 17yo pup (inherited from my grandma because I was best suited to take in a second dog). He’s a really needy old man roommate:
It is weird for the traditional view of pets as property, beasts of labour, ornaments, or other living in-person. However recent decades has seen a popular shift towards treating select sentient animals (experience emotions) with some degree of sapience (reasoning/higher cognition), like cats and dogs, as people. Humans treat them as individual persons with their own subjective experience, desires, and lives worth living.
So when a human adopts a non-human animal under this view, they are also taking on the responsibility to care for the animal’s needs and we’ll-being, not just for what the animal provides the human (as would be the case of a beast of burden) but primarily for the sake of the animal’s own worthwhile life–the human takes on a guardianship/parental role. This is why people are more and more being referred to as mom/dad/parent of their pet. More and more people are adopting animals as non-human children. Vets like to enforce it because it reduces animal cruelty and makes people more likely to do basic care.
This isn’t to say many farmers don’t try to give their animals a good life or recognize them as feeling beings with their own personality. They do, but not to the same degree as treating a pet as a non-human child.
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 @[email protected] 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
In that case, we already have words for people who are owned and sold as property. She’s the dog’s master.
I always find it really off-putting.
No, it’s weird.
Until you have pets who care.
Extremely.
I just suspect they have about the same IQ as their pet if they say stuff like that.