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.
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 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’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.
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.
Am I the only one who finds it really weird when people refer to themselves as mom or dad of their pets? Yikes
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
My dogs were not siblings of each other. They were roommates forced together by circumstances.
well okay that one time she decided to put her head in my mouth doesn’t count
“Hi, I’m here with Elvis. He’s my half-uncle on my mom’s side.”
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…
Never a pet? Isn’t the thing that they were annoyed about, that it always happens with pets?
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”
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.
Yes
No…
I have pets and I find it weird.
I always find it really off-putting.
No, it’s weird.
Extremely.
I just suspect they have about the same IQ as their pet if they say stuff like that.