‘Mum cleaned it and I just played with it’: Children’s perceptions of their roles and responsibilities in the care of family pets

Methods and data analysis

There were several reasons for choosing focus groups for the initial child study: first, to explore children’s attitudes and ‘unfiltered perspectives’ (Charlesworth and Rodwell, 1997), which are more likely revealed within this context than in individual interviews (Barbour and Kitzinger, 1999). That focus groups often resemble ordinary conversations when group members know each other was seen as key to helping identify (1) how ideas are formed around issues of care and responsibility and (2) the influence of family and gender. From a more pragmatic perspective, they were the most expedient route to scoping children’s perceptions with a view to identifying themes to pursue in our later work. While there are limitations to focus groups (particularly as they can be biased towards more vocal children), the researcher facilitating the groups was very experienced with this method and the general approach throughout was informal and conversational. It should be noted that the topic was particularly stimulating and every child contributed openly to the discussions. The challenge was ensuring enough ground was covered, as they were so keen to tell their individual animal stories in great detail.

The planned sample for the study included equal numbers of boys and girls across four age groups, extending into secondary school, acknowledging that different factors are likely to constrain caring activities at different ages. This sample was not achieved as a result of schools’ arrangements and changes of plan on the day. Therefore, the final sample (see Table 1) was skewed towards the females: 53 children (30 girls and 23 boys) aged 7, 9, 11 and 13 years. Four children participated in each same-sex group, with the exception of two groups of girls and one group of boys. They attended one of three schools in Fife, Scotland (two primaries and one secondary) that were closely situated and matched according to their socio-economic status (medium). The semi-rural location of the schools meant that several children lived on farms or owned horses and these animals were included by children in response to questions about pets. Indeed, we use the term ‘family pets’ throughout because children identified ‘pets’ as animals that belonged to the family. Of the 53 children, 42 (79%) were current owners (i.e. one or more animals shared their home or, if parents were separated, one of the parental homes. This also included those who had a horse or lived on a farm). All the pupils were of White and British origin.

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Table 1.

The distribution of the sample.

School	Gender	Age 7	Age 9	Age 11	Age 13	Total
1: Primary	Boys	4	4	0	–	8
	Girls	6	4	4	–	14
2: Primary	Boys	4	4	0	–	8
	Girls	4	0	4	–	8
3: Secondary	Boys	–	–	–	7	7
	Girls	–	–	–	8	8
Total		18	12	8	15	53

The first half of the groups focused on attitudes and knowledge while the second half, the focus of this article, looked at care and responsibility. Discussion was structured around three questions relating to care: Who looks after the pets in your family? Do you look after them at all and what do you do? Is there anything you would like to do for your pets that you are not able to do at the moment? Two activity sheets were used to explore how children viewed responsibility. They asked children to highlight on a diagram, first, who they thought usually looked after animals in a typical family, and second, who should? We wanted to assess here, with the first sheet, whether gender played a significant role as suggested by the literature. The second was used to investigate attitudes towards responsibility and the degree to which they felt children should take responsibility. We were interested in how children responded to the concept of ‘owner’ and whether they considered themselves owners. As this was the latter half of the discussion and some groups were cut short due to school requirements, only 15 of the 23 boys were explicitly asked about responsibility. Nonetheless, it was discussed spontaneously in the two remaining groups. The groups ranged between 40 and 60 minutes and took place during a normal school period, sometimes running into breaks. They were audiotaped and transcribed in full, and pseudonyms were created for each child.

A general inductive approach (see Thomas, 2003) was taken to analyse the data. Briefly, this involved thorough reading and rereading of transcripts and immersion in the data from each group, making notes on hard copies of common or unusual themes and drawing up summaries. To aid retrieval and organisation of data, codes were assigned using the computer package NVivo. Summarising matrices were drawn up to identify the extent to which issues arising within one group were apparent within others. Individual transcripts were revisited to understand children’s meaning in the context of the broader conversation. During this process, gender and age differences were identified. We were concerned, as the research questions suggest, with whether and how children identified these factors, alongside family, as influential.

Children’s caring activities relative to other family members

Children’s beliefs about responsibility for pets

The final pair of questions asked children to confirm who they felt was usually responsible for pets within families and then consider who should be responsible. The second question was used to ascertain the extent to which children felt they should take personal responsibility. Responses to the two questions are summarised in Figure 1 for girls and Figure 2 for boys. For both questions, children could choose from ‘mum’, ‘dad’, ‘children’, ‘owner’ and ‘other’ and were free to tick more than one option.

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Figure 1.

Percentage of total nominations for the two questions regarding responsibility (girls).

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Figure 2.

Percentage of total nominations for the two questions regarding responsibility (boys).

Figure 1 shows a relatively even distribution of responses for four of the five choices, with few girls agreeing that pets were usually looked after by some ‘other’ person. However, when looking at differences between the two questions within each option, it becomes evident that girls are far more likely to agree that pets should be looked after by their owners, and not by the children’s parents. Frequently, pets were seen to belong to the child, so by inference, they were construed as the ‘owner’:

Importantly though, through discussion, girls very quickly came to the conclusion that responsibility should be shared, with almost unanimous agreement that every family member should help to some degree:

Turning to boys, the distribution of responses to the first question is visibly different to that of the girls (see Figure 2).

Boys were far more likely to report that pets are usually looked after by children and/or mum than by dad. Like girls, they rarely felt that pets were looked after by some ‘other’ person and agreed that it was the owners who should be responsible. Indeed, the boys seemed adamant that responsibility lay with the owner and did not invoke the notion of shared responsibility as strongly as girls.

On the surface, these findings point to a consensus among children that owners should take prime responsibility for pets. However, the question of ownership is problematic. While the majority of girls (and some of the boys) identified the child who asked for the animal as the ‘owner’, it is still difficult to make the distinction called for by Fifield and Forsyth (1999) between ‘family-owned’ and ‘child-owned’ pets. Boys may even differ from girls in their concept of ‘ownership’:

In some cases, children are told explicitly by parents that the pet is theirs and they need to take full and sometimes sole responsibility for it, but this is relatively unusual. In most families, boundaries and roles are blurred.

The meaning of play: Play for the child versus play for the animal

While adults make the distinction between play and care (Melson and Fogel, 1996), children do not. Play, at least for the girls in this sample, was a legitimate form of care, a way of showing love and preventing boredom in the animal. In some ways, this belief may reflect the importance of play to them (Glenn et al., 2013) and how much play is viewed as part of the care they receive from parents (Booth and Jernberg, 2010). Simultaneously, girls criticised those who were younger for ‘just’ playing with the animal, while defending their own (playing) role. It seems older girls are alluding to a different form of play that is, as Sophie explained, for the animal’s fun as well as the child’s. Play, then, is seen by children as important to the animal (an animal need) and perhaps needs to be recognised as such by adults. However, is it sufficient for children to take on this role and not other forms of pet care? This model of care in the family seems to promote positive attitudes and affection, especially among primary school-age children. Giving children more jobs or sole responsibility detracts from the joy of pet ownership and perhaps raises anxieties. Nevertheless, what if, by focusing on more pleasurable aspects of pet care, an unrealistic picture of ownership and responsibility is engendered? Alternatively, if the child’s play with an animal strengthens their relationship in ways that mirror the effects of parent–child play (Ginsburg, 2007), this perhaps leads the way into other forms of care (see Myers and Saunders, 2002).

The significance of family: Roles and restrictions

Children clearly show concern about their pets. However, this does not necessarily translate into action. For this to happen, Chawla (1988: 17) argues that a number of conditions need to be met. Drawing on the work of Mussen and Eisenberg-Berg (1977), she suggests that children need to (1) know norms of reciprocity and responsibility, (2) perceive another’s needs and interpret them accurately, (3) recognise that help is possible, (4) feel competent to do what is needed and (5) estimate that the cost entailed in helping will not be prohibitive. Children in this study clearly knew norms of reciprocity and responsibility; girls in particular felt everyone should contribute to looking after pets in the family, especially if they enjoyed playing with them. However, the findings point to problems with the remaining conditions because parents are preventing children from taking an active role in the way they handle pet care issues.

On the one hand, children expressed frustration when parents did not help them or insisted they have full responsibility (Bryant, 1990, reports similar findings). On the other hand, and more prevalent in children’s talk, was parents not allowing them to care for the animal. It appears that trust is an issue here. While most parents understandably want to safeguard their children and their animals, refusal to let children take responsibility where they want to (with support) ultimately sends the message that they are not competent enough. If this is the case, how can we expect children to develop responsible attitudes and behaviour? This conclusion accords with Morrow’s (2008) discussion of the social context around children caring for siblings. Here, she suggests, there is reluctance on the part of parents to give children credit for the caring work they (are able to) do. Family (adult) disaggregation of tasks and responsibilities therefore appears to have a strong link to children’s behaviour, given the importance in children’s eyes of rules, boundaries, proprieties and prohibitions (Tipper, 2011).

The costs associated with helping may be considered especially prohibitive if they have implications for a child’s gender identity and feelings about self. Tipper (2011) argues that there is much to be explored about how gender and generation overlap in children’s experience of their relationships with animals and our research supports this view with respect to care. Far from being ‘gender neutral’ (Melson, 2001), we found that children are keenly aware of the types of ‘jobs’ undertaken by mums and dads and the differential ways they interact with pets, with some boys strongly asserting that they did not (and would not) clean out pet animals (also reported by Myers and Saunders, 2002). We can only anticipate that this avoidance of tasks associated with ‘mums’ intensifies with the increasing pressure to conform to adult gender stereotypes that accompanies the move into early adolescence (Chawla, 1988). The degree to which this explains a distancing from involvement with animals that appears to occur at this time (see Mathers et al., 2010) is yet to be ascertained. It should be noted that disgust also plays a role in the avoidance of particular pet care activities. Uncertainty about animals’ behaviour is another barrier for children, which would almost certainly be eliminated if children had sufficient knowledge of animal needs and were taught how to identify behavioural cues and act in response (Chawla, 1988).

The responsibility dilemma

When deliberately reflecting on the ways humans should care for animals, children (girls in particular) believe everyone should play a role. However, alongside this well thought–through morally ethical stance, they more spontaneously refer to not caring that much for animals in their household. The contradiction between believing everyone should take a role but not contributing yourself (voiced explicitly by Serena – see the section ‘Findings’) highlights further complexities with the care of family pets. The owner is often not defined. Neither are roles and responsibilities, unless there is a clear-cut definition of the owner as the child who wanted the animal. Children may want to take more responsibility, but their feeling of not being allowed or being blamed may culminate, as suggested earlier, in them feeling they are not competent enough to care for pets. As Tipper (2011) argues, ‘children’s reflections on their relationships with animals draw on their understanding of their social world and their position within it’ (p. 161). Understanding how to influence the parental role is therefore imperative if we want children to take more responsibility for the care of animals.

Parental roles aside, it is also possible that children see their pets rather differently from the rest of the animal world, as pets have been described as occupying ‘a liminal position on the boundaries between “human” and “animal”’ (Fox, 2006: 526), valued for their ‘animalness’ but also treated as ‘little humans’. Returning to the issues with which we began this article, several questions are raised by our study. First, is a consequence of having a close relationship with a pet (perhaps developed primarily through play) that children only see them as a friend (and or equal) and not as someone who is dependent on them? The generalisation of care from particular animals (where natural care develops in the context of a close relationship) to the wider animal world requires more of a ‘justice’ orientation (Myers and Saunders, 2002). Here, there is recognition of moral obligation, that we might have do things that we do not necessarily want to. Do we therefore need to explicitly encourage this orientation in tandem with the development of close child–pet relationships? Moreover, how might this be reconciled with the restrictions imposed by parents and the roles and behaviours they model?

Linked to these questions, our findings are strongly suggestive of a role for educators in developing a model of care that specifies the sequence of activities children can be encouraged to engage in to move towards more comprehensive care. Guidance for parents on how to manage the process of allowing children more and more responsibility may be particularly useful. A fine balance needs to be struck between educating children on the full gamut of caring for a pet, while supporting them so they feel responsibility is, and should be, shared and not solely in their hands.