Are you an owner, a pet parent or an in-home zoo keeper?

While legally we are the owners of our pets, these days many of us use other terms in casual conversation. Fur Mama, Pet Parent and Animal Guardian are just a few options. Pet parents want to acknowledge that the relationship we have with our pets is substantially different from the one we have with our vehicles, clothing and other things we “own.”

Living with pets has several similarities to living with children. It’s not really surprising that many of us use terms like pet parent, fur mama/dada and such as titles to refer to ourselves.

After all, we “raise” puppies and kittens. We “teach” obedience (sometimes), and engage in “potty” training new pets. These are the same terms that human parents use in reference to their human toddlers and children. What is interesting is the number of people I have run into who find such titles for pet parents personally offensive!

The main group of people I have met who do not care for these kinds of titles are parents of multiple human children.

I can understand when the objector is elderly. Attitudes towards pets have changed a lot in the last few decades. Someone who thinks a dog doesn’t belong in the house, let alone the bedroom, is unlikely to feel comfortable using a term like “pet parent” or “fur daddy.”

When the person objecting is my age or younger, though, I find it more intriguing, and I will surreptitiously dig into their reasoning, if I can do so without causing offense.

One reason is that they think being a parent of a human child is a really big deal and don’t like that pet parents have co-opted the term they think of as their own.

I can’t really argue with this. Although my calling myself a pet parent in no way diminishes another’s use of it for parenting human children, I can understand the mindset they are coming from. Being a parent of a human child IS a big deal, of course.

For all the similarities of parenting pets and human children, they are also dramatically different. That’s a whole other post, so I won’t delve into it here.

But when the person says “I didn’t give birth to Fluffy, so she is not my child and I am NOT her parent,” I usually want to pipe up and remind them that lots of human parents are not genetically or biologically linked to their children.

There is a whole lot more to being a parent of anything than just genes and gestation.

That’s just a dismissive way to say being a pet parent is far less substantial than having procreated in the human manner, and to insinuate that those of us who are closely bonded with our pets are being uppity to call ourselves their “pet parents.” I’ve even had people suggest that my close relationship with my pets is psychologically unsound.

The bond we have with our companion animals is unique. I do wish we had a term we could all agree upon to acknowledge this without anyone feeling diminished.I will continue to use my preferred term, pet parent. It is the term that most closely defines the kind of relationship I have with my Tribe.

What terms/titles do you use, and do you have an interesting one you have heard or created?