Received: 29 March 2016 Revised: 21 November 2016 Accepted: 15 December 2016

DOI 10.1111/soc4.12455

ARTICLE

More‐than‐human families: Pets, people, and

practices in multispecies households
Leslie Irvine | Laurent Cilia

Department of Sociology, University of

Colorado at Boulder, USA
Correspondence
Leslie Irvine, Department of Sociology,
University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO
80309‐0327, USA.
Email: leslie.irvine@colorado.edu
Abstract
Although humans have coexisted with dogs and cats for thousands
of years, that coexistence has taken on various meanings over time.
Only recently have people openly included their pets as members of
the family. Yet, because of the cultural ambivalence toward animals,
what it means for a pet to “be” a family member remains unsettled.
Drawing from research on family practices including kinship, house-
hold routines, childhood socialization, and domestic violence, this
paper considers how pets participate in “doing” family and what
their presence means for this social arrangement long considered
quintessentially human. Today's more‐than‐human families repre-
sent a hybrid of relations, human and animal and social and natural,
rather than an entirely new kind of family. Becoming family has
always been contingent on a cast of nonhuman characters, and rec-
ognition of the “more‐than‐human” can enhance sociological under-
standing, not only of the family but also of other aspects of social
life.

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

In a 1988 article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, Alexa Albert and Kris Bulcroft wrote, “to date, none of the
leading family studies journals have presented research based on systematically collected, empirical data on the role of
the pet in the American household” (p. 543). They quoted a 1960 text entitled The Sociology of Child Development, in
which the authors noted that “the role of the domestic pet in family life and child development has been neglected for
the most part by serious students, despite their obvious importance” (Bossard & Boll, 1960, p. 206). Over recent
decades, the importance of pets in families has become much harder to ignore. First, the population of pets has
increased dramatically, quadrupling in the United States, and nearly doubling in the United Kingdom (Grimm, 2014;
Pet Food Manufacturers Association, 2016). According to recent surveys, over half of all households in the United
States, Canada, and the European Union currently include at least one pet (American Veterinary Medical Association,
2012; European Pet Food Industry Federation, 2014; Gibbs, 2013). The figure is just under half in the United Kingdom
(PFMA, 2016). Moreover, the way people value and regard animals, in general, and pets, in particular, has changed in
the last half century (Franklin, 1999; Kellert, 1985, 1993; Serpell, 1996). Franklin (1999) describes this as a shift from
anthropocentrism (the assumption of human ascendancy) to zoocentrism (the recognition of animals as full or partial
subjects), with a corresponding rise in sentimentality toward animals (see also Franklin & White, 2001). During the

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https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12455
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latter decades of the twentieth century, new knowledge about animals' emotional and cognitive capacities enhanced
their moral status (see Allen & Bekoff, 1999). At the same time, scholars from a range of disciplines began to recognize
our similarities to other animals and subsequently challenged the ideological boundary separating “us” from “them”
(Fudge, 2008; Haraway, 2003, 2008; Midgley, 1983; Rowlands, 2002). The human‐animal binary yielded to a growing
awareness that living and nonliving organisms “become with” one another, and that other beings—large and small,
human, animal, insect, and microbe—colonize our bodies, share our living spaces, and make us what we are (Haraway,
2003). As Cudworth writes, “We, the animals who like to call ourselves ‘human,’ all live multispecies lives, whether or
not we know it, or we like it” (Cudworth, 2011, p. 1; see also Nimmo, 2011; Wilkie, 2015).
At the same time, however, people continue to regard nonhuman animals with considerable ambivalence (Arluke
& Sanders, 1996; Serpell, 1996). We can acknowledge them as “minded” beings (Sanders, 1993), but we can also con-
sider them as disposable objects or possessions (Belk, 1996). Moreover, we rank animals along a “sociozoologic scale,”
placing a species high—near us—or low, depending on how well they serve human needs and fulfill the roles we assign
them (Arluke & Sanders, 1996, pp. 167–186; see also Irvine, 2009; Morris, 2012; Smith‐Harris, 2004; Vermilya, 2012).
Although we allow some species into our homes and even onto our beds, we consider others useful only as food and
some, we deem pests or vermin, deserving our scorn and extermination. Our cultural ambivalence toward animals also
means that we treat members of the same species differently. The dog, for example, can be a cherished companion, a
farm worker, a hunter, a roaming nuisance, a racing or fighting “machine,” a tool for research, or food (Arluke, 1988;
Jackson, 2001; Kalof & Taylor, 2007; Podberscek, 2009). Increasingly, though, people consider dogs, cats, and other
animals as family members (Albert & Bulcroft, 1988; AVMA, 2012; Cain, 1983; Charles, 2014; Charles & Davies, 2008;
Fox, 2006; Franklin, 2006; Miller, 2011; Power, 2008; Shannon‐Missal, 2015; Shir‐Vertesh, 2012). Although one
could easily assume that this holds mainly for single people or childfree couples, households with children have the
highest rates of pet ownership (AVMA, 2012; Franklin, 2007).
Because of the cultural ambivalence toward animals, what it means for a pet to “be” a family member varies
greatly. Moreover, pets have won this designation rather recently. Granted, dogs, in particular, have a long, shared his-
tory with humans. Although conventional estimates dated their domestication to 15,000 years ago, recent studies
suggest that human‐canine coexistence began 30,000 years ago (Larson et al., 2012; Morey, 2014). As for cats,
scholars long believed that the ancient Egyptians were the first to keep them as pets, starting around 3,600 years
ago. However, archaeological discoveries and genetic research have revised this thinking, too. Evidence now dates
human‐cat relationships to 9,500 years ago (Vigne, Guilaine, Debue, Haye, & Gérard, 2004). Over this long history
of coexistence, our relationships with dogs and cats have taken myriad forms, and few of them involved the warm,
fuzzy emotions associated with “petness” today. For most of our shared history, dogs and cats lived outdoors and
had tasks to do, such as hunting, hauling, keeping vermin away, or guarding and herding livestock. Beginning in the
nineteenth century, however, and accelerating since World War 2, the roles of dogs and cats changed (Grier, 1999,
2006; Kete, 1994; Ritvo, 1987; Serpell, 1996). Most significantly, they moved indoors and became pets (Fogle,
1999). The economy responded to this change in status with products and services that essentially constitute a
“pet industrial complex.” In the United States, the revenues of this sector doubled just over the last decade (Schaeffer,
2009). Globally, consumer spending on pet food alone is spending accounts for $70 billion, with nearly two‐thirds of
that amount spent in the United States and Europe (WATT Global Media, 2016). People can—and do—lavish attention
on pets. They can feed their pets organic, human‐grade food and surround them with toys and activities intended to
enrich their lives. But people can also leave them alone all day, perhaps, locked in a crate. We have the power to
decide the fate of our pets unlike any power we have over the human members of our families. We control their
movement, their access to outdoors, when and what they eat, and when they defecate and urinate. We value them
for their animality and difference, but we attempt to “civilize” them through selective breeding, spaying and neutering,
declawing, and training (Tuan, 1984). We can relinquish them to shelters or end their lives if they become sick, old,
inconvenient, or if their behavior fails to meet expectations. We can consider a pet a “person,” in that “that his or
her perspective and feelings are knowable; interaction is predictable; and the shared relationship provides an experi-
ence of closeness, warmth, and pleasure” (Sanders, 2003, p. 418). However, we can easily revoke their personhood.
IRVINE AND CILIA 3 of 13

The ambivalence with which we regard animals raises the question of whether pets can truly attain full family
membership. Some scholars suggest that pets occupy a liminal status: domestic, but not human; family member,
but still “other”; and situated “at the intersection of kin and kind” (Fox, 2006; Holmberg, 2015; Redmalm, 2015;
Sanders, 1995; Shell, 1986, p. 137). In this paper, we consider how pets participate in the accomplishment of family
and what their presence suggests about the meaning of this social arrangement long considered quintessentially
human. We provide an overview of the research on how people incorporate pets into families, using examples from
studies of kinship, domestic practices, childhood socialization, and domestic violence. We conclude by discussing
the value of a “more‐than‐human” approach for understanding family, as well as other aspects of social life.
First, however, we offer a note about language. Some people, scholars included, prefer the term “companion ani-
mal” to “pet” and refer to the human member of the relationship as a “guardian” rather than an “owner” (Irvine, 2004).
The shift in language reflects a contention that “pet” trivializes the animal's role in the relationship and “owner” per-
petuates the status of animals as “objects, possessions, or disposable property” (Carlisle‐Frank & Frank, 2006, p. 226).
Several American cities, including San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, and Amherst, Massachusetts, have implemented
this language in ordinances. Although the newer terms seem headed in a more humane, boundary‐blurring direction,
they have their critics. For instance, the American Veterinary Medical Association (2005) maintains that guardianship
laws have potentially negative implications for the treatment of pets. Although we acknowledge that words matter,
for simplicity's sake, we use “pet” and “owner” throughout this paper.

2 | B EC O M I N G F A M I L Y

The question of how pets become family members begs the question of how some animals become pets in the first
place (see Eddy, 2003; Thomas, 1983). Although dogs and cats are the most common pets, the status is not limited
to members of a particular species.1 If the term “pet” refers simply to a favored animal, then any species can qualify,
as demonstrated by “petted livestock,” who are regarded as unique and “more humanized” than those considered “just
animals” (Wilkie, 2010, p. 141). The pet cow, sheep, or pig typically holds that favored status only tentatively, how-
ever. When the time comes to send the animal to market, he or she can easily become a commodity. Scholars of
the practice of pet keeping limit the designation to those animals we (a) assign individual, personal names; (b) allow
in the house; and most importantly, (c) would not eat (Thomas, 1983). Moreover, the animals we conventionally des-
ignate as pets occupy positions high on the sociozoologic scale.
In early research on how pets become family members, Hickrod and Schmitt (1982) used Goffman's (1974) “frame
analysis” and the process of “keying” to explain how the transition occurs. In brief, a “frame” provides a definition of
reality and answers the question “What is going on here?” (Goffman, 1974, pp. 1–20). Goffman distinguished “pri-
mary” frames, which “answer the question in and of themselves,” and “keyed” frames, which involve transformations
of primary frames (Hickrod & Schmitt, 1982, p. 58). Through keying, “a given activity, one already meaningful in terms
of some primary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to
be something quite else” (Goffman, 1974, pp. 43–44). As an example, consider two dogs engaged in play fighting. To
understand a play fight, an onlooker must first have an understanding of the primary frame of an actual fight. The play
fight represents a keyed frame. Likewise, understanding an animal as family member requires first grasping the pri-
mary frame of family; however, one understands it.
For Hickrod and Schmitt, the keying process begins when a pet first enters a household. Keying continues when
the pet receives a name. The act of naming pets “implies that these animals are going to be given special treatment
and that individual attributes or personalities are likely to be claimed for them” (Beck & Katcher, 1996, pp. 11–12;
see also Phillips, 1994). Keying intensifies once human family members develop feelings for the animal. Along the
way, people become aware of these feelings, evidenced through statements such as “I am surprised at how attached
I have become to my dog” (Hickrod & Schmitt, 1982, p. 64; see also Sanders, 1999). The relationship with the pet
becomes routinized through “tie signs” (Goffman, 1971), such as leashes, collars, physical contact, mutual gaze, and
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through the retelling of the shared history (Sanders, 1999, 2003). When fully keyed, people “behave toward [pets] as if
they are family members” (Hickrod & Schmitt, 1982, p. 59; emphasis added).

2.1 | From “keying” to “doing”

Hickrod and Schmitt take an essentialist stance on “the family” as an entity composed of human beings. They grant
pets only “pretend” membership because they lack the essential characteristic of humanness and can consequently
only be regarded “as if” they were family members. In the decades since the publication of Hickrod and Schmitt's arti-
cle, scholars of the family have adopted more complex and nuanced understandings of the phenomenon they study
(see Charles, Davies, & Harris, 2008). They challenged definitions based on two cohabiting, heterosexual adults and
their offspring. The conventional image of the nuclear or “Standard North American Family” (Smith, 1993) failed to
describe the many, varied familial forms that people experience, such as those that transcend biological ties, consist
of same‐sex couples or single parents, or include multiple generations, just to list some of the possibilities (see Stacey,
1990; Stack, 1974). Some scholars began to consider family “an idea or configuration of meanings,” rather than an
objective entity (Holstein & Gubrium, 1999, p. 5). In this perspective, family is the enactment of those meanings in
domestic life (Bernardes, 1999; Trost, 1990; Weigel, 2008). For example, Morgan's notion of “family practices”
emphatically avoids essentializing “the family” and focuses instead on the activities of time, space, emotions, and bod-
ies involved in the “doing” of family (Morgan, 1996, 2011). He wrote that “‘family’ is not a thing, but a way of looking
at, and describing, practices which might also be described in a variety of other ways” (Morgan, 1996, p. 199). Prac-
tices such as body care, food and feeding, sexual intimacy, and even violence are not simply things that family mem-
bers do; rather, the very doing of them constitutes family.
Informed by newer perspectives, recent scholarship meticulously details how pets participate in “doing” family
(Charles, 2014; Charles & Davies, 2008; Fox, 2006; Power, 2008; Shir‐Vertesh, 2012).2 Whereas for Hickrod and
Schmitt, a pet's entrance into a family left it more or less unchanged; current research reveals how pets actively
reshape everyday family practices. For example, because the dependency of animals brings obligations to provide
for their well‐being (Benton, 1993), engaging the necessary practices of care, such as feeding, walking, protecting, nur-
turing, and other responsibilities, draws people and animals into “familiar and intimate relations” (Charles, 2014, 2016;
Charles & Davies, 2008; Power, 2008: p. 551; Sanders, 1999). Pets shape the “doing” of household routines by waking
their human family members up in the morning or by demonstrating their desire for food, walks, or play (Carter &
Charles, 2013; Sanders, 1999). Moreover, instead of treating pets as “pretend” family members, people develop close
attachments to their pets and rely on them for the emotional support that characterizes kinship (Charles, 2016; Irvine,
2004). Some people solidify the sense of kinship by referring to their pets as children or “fur babies” (Greenebaum,
2004) and themselves as pet parents, even using the terms “mom” or “dad” (Charles, 2016; Miller, 2001; Shir‐Vertesh,
2012).3 Even people who avoid calling themselves parents include their pets in family photos (Carlisle‐Frank & Frank,
2006). In addition, as both cause and consequence of the familiarity and intimacy that develop, people talk “to” their
pets and speak “for” them. These dialogs provide evidence that people see pets as subjective beings with interests and
reciprocal roles in the interaction. In talking “to” pets, people grant them “at least a rudimentary ability to construct
meaning—to purposefully define situations and devise coherent plans of action on the basis of these definitions”
(Sanders, 1999, p. 5). For example, owners often ask dogs questions, such as “What do you see?” or “Do you want
to go out?” (Arluke & Sanders, 1996, pp. 68–69). In speaking “for” pets, owners “fill in” for the pet and put his or
her experience into words (Arluke & Sanders, 1996, p. 61–81). During a veterinary exam, for example, an owner
speaking for a pet might say, “He (or she) says, ‘I don't like that. I want to go home now’.” In speaking to and for pets,
people construct the minds of their animal companions, much as parents do for children before they can speak.
Through this interlocution, people acknowledge the subjectivity of their pets and their ability to share intentions, feel-
ings, and other mental states with their human companions (Alger & Alger, 1997; Carter & Charles, 2013; Irvine, 2004;
Sanders, 1999).
IRVINE AND CILIA 5 of 13

Kinship status gives many pets access to areas of the home once reserved for humans, such as bedrooms and
bathrooms (Franklin, 2006; Gabb, 2008). Most western pet owners report that their dogs and/or cats “frequently
or occasionally” sleep in bed with them (Serpell, 1996; Shannon‐Missal, 2015). And as family members, individual pets
uniquely influence domestic rituals, both mundane, such as finishing the milk at the bottom of a bowl or pushing in the
drawer of a dishwasher after cleanup (Power, 2008), and noteworthy, such as birthday and holiday celebrations, even
receiving their own gifts (Newport, Jones, Saad, & Carroll, 2006; Schaeffer, 2009; Shannon‐Missal, 2015). Moreover,
pets influence the interiors of homes. Long designed solely as human domains, many homes now include “species‐spe-
cific furniture” (Franklin, 2006, p. 148), such as beds for dogs and climbing trees, perches, and scratching posts for cats.
Finally, as family members, pets become irreplaceable (Redmalm, 2015). Although families may include many different
pets over time, each animal is considered a unique individual whose death is met with grief and mourning (Charles &
Davies, 2008; Enders‐Slegers, 2000; Irvine, 2003b; Morris, 2012).
Because of the cultural ambivalence that characterizes human‐animal relations, neither personhood nor family
membership is ever fully secure for pets. Some owners maintain a distance between animals and humans, taking care
not to equate their pets with children or to keep in mind that pets are “just animals” (Blouin, 2013; Charles, 2016;
Power, 2008). In some families, dogs, in particular, might be restricted from certain areas of the home designated only
for people. Some pets gain the status of family members only as long as they comply with the code of conduct
established for them. Their nonhumanness allows us to consider pets as objects, rather than persons, at will. Issues
of cleanliness, training, shedding, scratching, house soiling, aggression, chewing, barking, and other animal behaviors
can strain and terminate the inclusion of pets in families (Power, 2008, p. 2012; Shir‐Vertesh, 2012). Millions of dogs
and cats who were once family members, or who could never quite attain that status, end up in animal shelters each
year (Irvine, 2003a, 2015). Shir‐Vertesh (2012) argues that pets can be “viewed along a ‘humanness’–‘animality’ con-
tinuum, flexibly positioned at different parts of the gamut as changes occur in the family and in the lives of its mem-
bers” (p. 428). A new job or a move to a different neighborhood can turn the responsibilities of caring for a pet from
routine to burden. The emotional connection to a pet can diminish with the arrival of “a more alluring love object, such
as a baby,” (Shir‐Vertesh, 2012, p. 428).

2.2 | Learning from pets

The birth of a child can diminish the status of a pet from family membership, but parents often decide to bring a pet
into the family for the sake of the children (Fifield & Forsyth, 1999). Pets occupy important places in the “social and
physical landscapes” of children (Tipper, 2011, p. 150). Along with describing current pets as part of their families, chil-
dren talk of other animals as “embedded in webs of kin relationships, such as the deceased pets found within the
stories told by family groups” (Tipper, 2011, p. 151). Children often consider their pets as siblings (Power, 2009)
and are more likely to confide in a pet than in a human sibling (University of Cambridge, 2015). The death of pets often
initiates children into the experience of loss and grief (McNicholas & Collis, 1995; Melson, 2001). In addition, children
of all ages speak to and for pets through the language known as “doggerel” (Hirsh‐Pasek & Treiman, 1982; Melson,
2001, 2008; Myers, 1998).
Parents often list learning responsibility as a main benefit of pet ownership for children (Fifield & Forsyth, 1999;
Grier, 1999). Although the responsibility itself may have intrinsic value, research and popular views alike have long
held that caring for pets helps children learn kindness, which would extend toward people, too (Ascione, 1997; Grier,
1999; Kellert, 1984; Muldoon, Williams, & Lawrence, 2015; Muldoon, Williams, Lawrence, Lakestani, & Currie, 2009).
The belief that kindness to animals portends kindness to people dates back at least as far as the thirteenth‐century
writings of Aquinas (see Serpell, 1996; Thomas, 1983).4 Training children to be kind to animals became an important
goal of middle‐class American parenting during the mid‐nineteenth century, when “pet keeping, an activity long
interpreted and tolerated as a personal indulgence, was transformed into a morally purposive act” (Grier, 1999, p. 96).
Empirical research on whether pets socialize children into kindness, which comes mainly from psychology, has
thus far yielded inconclusive results. Although one study found an association between pet ownership in childhood
6 of 13 IRVINE AND CILIA

and concern for the welfare of both humans and nonhuman animals (Paul & Serpell, 1993), another found that own-
ership did not result in significantly higher empathy (Daly & Morton, 2003). One found that pet ownership influenced
empathy directed at animals, but not humans (Paul, 2000), but in another, pet ownership, regardless of time, had no
effect on concern for nonhuman animals (Signal & Taylor, 2006). Some research suggests that the closeness of the
bond with the pet matters more than mere ownership does (Daly, Taylor, & Signal, 2014; Poresky, Hendrix, Mosier,
& Samuelson, 1988). Others find the timing of the bond with the pet significant; bonds formed early in childhood man-
ifested more positive attitudes toward animals than did those formed later (Poresky et al., 1988).
The expectation that kindness to animals will generalize comes with the parallel presumption about cruelty. Here,
the sociological work makes a significant, albeit controversial, contribution. The mainstream research, mostly from
psychology, assumes that childhood cruelty to animals progresses to human‐directed acts. This idea of a progression
gained traction through a 1963 article that listed animal cruelty among the warning signs of sociopathic behavior,
along with bed‐wetting and fire setting (MacDonald, 1963). Although subsequent research could not support the sig-
nificance of this “triad” empirically, the idea that animal abusers progress to violence toward humans remains firmly
established among criminologists and the public (Arluke, Levin, Luke, & Ascione, 1999). The notion that animal cruelty
leads to other forms of violence serves an important ideological function in explaining violent crime. Any scholar who
questions the idea challenges a sacred cow.
Research by sociologist Arnold Arluke poses such a challenge by arguing that “the meaning of harming animals
[cannot] be independently arrived at and imposed apart from real‐world situations where it occurs” (Arluke, 2006,
p. 5). Informed by symbolic interactionism, Arluke examined how those who engage in acts considered cruel define
and understand those acts. In interviews with college students, he found that approximately 20% of the students
admitted to having harmed or killed animals as children or adolescents (none had been arrested for their acts).5 In ana-
lyzing the significance that their cruelty had for the students, four elements of their experience indicated that they
defined their actions as play, not animal abuse. First, many of them recalled acts such as teasing pets or shooting wild
birds as just things kids did when they had nothing else to do. Second, they equated their actions with other forms of
play, such as skateboarding or video games. Third, they did not recall violent or explosive emotions directing their acts
nor did they recall intending to harm or to kill animals. Finally, they kept their acts within limits. They recalled only
wanting to toy with the animals, for example, not trying to kill them. Nevertheless, the students recognized that their
behavior had “a serious edge that distinguished it from everyday play in general or normal play with animals” (Arluke,
2006, p. 62). In this way, their cruelty constituted what is known as “dirty play” (Fine, 1986), which functions as a rite
of passage into adult behaviors. Dirty play can include “aggressive pranks, sexual talk, and racist remarks,” or acts such
as harming animals (Arluke, 2002, p. 408). Especially when engaged in with peers, dirty play instructs kids in adult‐like
knowledge such as keeping secrets and establishing boundaries.
As children mature and their identities change, they stop thinking of dirty play as fun. Years later, the students
Arluke interviewed indicated that they had left abusive behavior behind, as do most children who abuse animals. They
do not go on to commit other acts of violence (Arluke et al., 1999). Although studies frequently claim that childhood
cruelty to animals predicts future violent behavior, most examine populations of inmates already incarcerated for vio-
lent crime (e.g., Felthous, 1980). Research on nonincarcerated populations finds no support for a path to other vio-
lence, particularly against humans (Arluke et al., 1999; Goodney Lea, 2007; Tallichet & Hensley, 2005). Arluke's
research suggests that the period during which some children's play included abusing animals “may have been more
of a cultural ‘time out’ than a lasting sign of incivility or anti‐social behavior” (Arluke, 2006, p. 78). Years later, some
students felt guilty about having harmed animals, and others laughed when they recalled their acts. This attests to
the ambivalence toward animals that characterizes modern Western societies. That some students could still find their
acts entertaining reflects not psychopathology but a culture deeply divided on the moral status of animals.
Acts of kindness and cruelty illustrate how children, pets, and parents actively engage in doing family. Children's
close relationships with pets, their communication with their pets, and their tendency to define pets as siblings reveal
both their conception of a flexible human‐animal boundary and how it intersects with their ideas about family. In the
case of cruelty, animals serve as a means through which children distinguish themselves from parents and experiment
IRVINE AND CILIA 7 of 13

with adulthood by engaging in taboo activities. As abhorrent as cruelty to animals is, when viewed as dirty play, it
sheds light on the intertwining of animal practices and doing family.

2.3 | Family power dynamics and domestic violence

Although the path from animal cruelty to other violent acts remains questionable, empirical research has documented
the co‐occurrence of animal abuse and domestic violence (see Flynn, 2011). Pets are vulnerable to direct abuse and to
being used as tools to threaten, punish, and intimidate women and children. Feminist scholarship has long emphasized
how gender and power influence domestic violence, and recent work incorporates species membership figures into
the dynamics (see Fitzgerald, 2005, 2007). The dependent status of pets makes them easy targets for abuse, and being
seen as a family member makes them more vulnerable (Flynn, 2000a). Abusers target pets because of the important
roles they play in women's lives. In domestic violence situations, relationships with pets provide women with emo-
tional support from traumatic experiences, serving as comforters and protectors (Flynn, 2000a). Between one‐half
and three‐fourths of battered women report that their abusers threatened, harmed, or killed their pets (Ascione,
1998; Ascione et al., 2007; Faver & Strand, 2003, 2007; Flynn, 2000a, 2000b). Abusers also coerce women to commit
crimes by threatening their pets. A quarter of the women in one study reported that their abusers used threats and
actual harm to their pets to compel them to rob banks, commit theft or fraud involving credit cards, stock, and bank
accounts, and engage in drug trafficking (Loring & Bolden‐Hines, 2004). Women also report that their pets suffered by
witnessing the abuse of their human companions (Flynn, 2000a). Pets reacted by shivering, shaking, cowering, hiding,
urinating, and displaying other characteristics of stress (see also Carter & Charles, 2013; Charles, 2016). A shortage of
shelters for victims of domestic violence that also accommodate pets can force women into choosing between staying
in an abusive situation or leaving pets with the abuser. Consequently, women often delay leaving violent situations
because of concerns about their pets' welfare (Flynn, 2000b).
The family power dynamics acquire another dimension when children witness the abuse of pets by parents.
Because children have no power to intervene in ongoing harm and because abusers often prevent them from
comforting their pets afterward, children's resulting emotional trauma includes fear, guilt, and grief (Atwood‐Harvey,
2007). By abusing pets, perpetrators send children a “chilling message about what is in store for them” (Melson, 2001,
p. 173). Atwood‐Harvey provides one of the few extant first‐hand accounts of how abusive parents threaten, harm,
and abandon pets to “silence, punish, and generally terrorize [children] into submission” (2007, p. 387). She describes
the experience of watching her pet dog being loaded into a truck and taken away. “I fell to my knees in front of my
father,” she recalls, “sobbing and begging, ‘I will do whatever you want. I will be good. Just don't take him away from
us” (2007, p. 389). She also discusses the “entangled victimization” children experience when adults threaten their
pets and force them to witness, and even participate in, abusive acts. She recalls beating her own dogs to spare them
a more severe beating from her father. In another first‐hand account, Ronai (1995) describes how her father, who sex-
ually abused her, coerced her into sexually assaulting the family dog and one of the dog's puppies. Both dogs conse-
quently died. Ronai writes, “the memories simultaneously interfere with the righteousness of my victim status and
stagger me with the realization of how victimized I was” (p. 417).
Abusers target pets not because they are “pretend” family members, but because they are family members. As
Flynn writes, because women and children “consider their companion animals as members of the family, pet abuse
should be not be considered just another type of wife or child abuse, but a separate form of family violence in itself”
(Flynn, 2012, p. 80). This prompts us to reflect on what “family” means, in light of the importance of animals.

3 | C O N CL U S I O N

According to Bernardes, “traditional views of ‘The Family’ have been conservative, racist, classist, and heterosexist”
(1999, p. 33). They have also been speciesist. For too long, unquestioned acceptance of the human‐animal boundary
8 of 13 IRVINE AND CILIA

concealed the anthropocentrism inherent in traditional views and blinded scholars to the interspecies dependence
that constitutes family (Charles, 2014). Although it no longer makes empirical or theoretical sense—if in fact it ever
did—to restrict the understanding of family to two heterosexual adults and their children, the question of how far
to stretch the definition remains. In closing, we consider how sociologists and other scholars might understand mul-
tispecies families.
One approach views pets as surrogate children, siblings, or friends. This “deficiency argument” (Irvine, 2004,
pp. 18–22) maintains that people who have pets lack the “appropriate” human relationships or the interactional skills
that would allow them to have such relationships. Couples and individuals without children are often cast in this light.
The image of the “crazy cat lady” personifies the deficiency argument. A version of this argument attributes the
increase in pet keeping to ontological insecurity brought on by “the fragmented and fugitive nature of postmodern
labour markets, communities and domestic relations” (Franklin & White, 2001, p. 224; Franklin, 1999). Amid the
change, confusion, and loss of social support, pets are “available, reliable, stable and predictable” (Franklin, 1999, p.
194). In this view, people turn to pets for what relationships with other people no longer provide. However, empirical
research does not support the deficiency argument. No extant research has found that the presence or absence of
particular qualities or characteristics predisposes people toward pet ownership. The best predictor of pet ownership
is neither loneliness, isolation, nor another symptom of ontological insecurity but pet ownership in childhood (Kidd &
Kidd, 1980). In addition, if people did consider animals surrogate children, then the highest rates of pet ownership
would occur among single people. As mentioned, the highest ownership rates occur in households that include children.
Another perspective views these multispecies arrangements as posthuman (Fox, 2006; Franklin, 1999, 2006; see
also Charles, 2014, 2016). By challenging entrenched notions of human superiority, posthumanism has, among other
goals, the intention “to disrupt absolute human‐animal binaries” (Fox, 2006, p. 527). However, as Charles (2016)
points out, human‐animal cohabitation is not a new phenomenon, and emotional closeness with animals does not nec-
essarily break down the human‐animal binary. Because of the cultural ambivalence with which we regard animals,
some practices within multispecies households may disrupt the human‐animal binary, but others enforce human
exceptionalism. Moreover, pets exist within relations dominated by humans. People can recognize them as persons,
but they can just as easily decide to shut them off in a separate room or surrender them to a shelter for rehoming.
Thus, emergence of a truly posthuman family remains doubtful.
A more promising perspective, and one used by much of the current work discussed here, recognizes that families
are, and always have been, constituted as “more‐than‐human.” Thinking in this way requires abandoning a concept of
“family” as a preconstituted entity and taking up the notion of “becoming with.” Along with a host of other matters
and relations long considered quintessentially human achievements, becoming family is in fact contingent on a cast
of nonhuman characters that include pets but also, as Haraway points out, “such organic beings as rice, bees, tulips,
and intestinal flora—all of whom make life for humans what it is, and vice versa” (p. 15). Family emerges in symbiosis
with these others, but separate from them. Pets can actively constitute family as animals, not as surrogate children or
furry human beings. Considering families as more‐than‐human reveals the intertwining of humans and animals with-
out decentering humans, who maintain responsibilities, establish rules, and provide care for other beings. More‐than‐
human families represent a hybrid that includes multiple relations of human and animal and social and natural, rather
than an entirely new way of doing family. The more‐than‐human perspective also opens up possibilities for under-
standing domains beyond the family. As growing numbers of sociologists acknowledge that social life is always lived
in more‐than‐human contexts, our research can begin to grasp how profoundly nonhumans create its possibilities.

ENDNOTES
1
As Wrye (2009) discusses, a pet need not even be an animal.
2
Notably, much of the research on pets and families comes from scholars based outside of the United States.
3
The portrayal of pets as children and owners as parents is commonplace in popular culture. PetSmart's chain of stores
began referring to pet owners as “parents” in its advertising 2005 (Howard, 2005). Veterinary clinics also use kinship idioms
by routinely designating animals using the last names of the owner, as in “Spot Smith” or “Boots Jones.” To be sure, the
IRVINE AND CILIA 9 of 13

terminology is contested (see Miller, 2011). For instance, Haraway writes, “to regard a dog as a furry child, even metaphor-
ically, demeans dogs and children” (2003, p. 37). However, as Charles (2016) notes, “It is important to note that idioms of
kinship and friendship are often used to describe close relationships with animals without necessarily suggesting a straight-
forward equivalence” (p. 18, n. iii; see also Charles, 2014).
4
Aquinas was no defender of animals. In expressing what is known as the “indirect duty view,” he argued that people have
no direct obligation to treat animals humanely because they were created as our subjects. However, because our treatment
of animals has implications for our conduct toward other human beings, we should avoid being cruel to animals. See Regan
and Singer (1976).
5
This is consistent with other studies, which have found results ranging from 14% to 35% (Flynn, 1999; Henry, 2004; Miller
& Knutson, 1997).

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How to cite this article: Irvine L, Cilia L. More‐than‐human families: Pets, people, and practices in
multispecies households. Sociology Compass. 2017;11:e12455. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12455

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Leslie Irvine is a professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her research interests focus on
human‐animal interaction. She has studied animal selfhood, animal sheltering, gender in veterinary medicine, animal
abuse, animals in popular culture, and animal welfare in disasters. Her most recent book is My Dog Always Eats First:
Homeless People and Their Animals (Lynne Rienner Publishers). Her articles have appeared in Society & Animals,
Anthrozoös, Gender & Society, Social Problems, The Sociological Quarterly, Qualitative Sociology, and Symbolic Interaction.

Laurent Cilia is a PhD student at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His research interests are in the areas of envi-
ronmental sociology, animal studies, political economy, and culture. His dissertation is tentatively entitled, “Between
Bees and Business: A Political Ethnography of Large‐Scale Commercial Beekeeping.”