Keeping pets is a widespread and expanding trend across the globe. With almost 90 million pet dogs and 94 million pet cats residing in the USA alone, dogs and cats are undoubtedly among the most popular pet species, however numbers and species kept differ among nations and cultures. Scientific interest in the effects of companion animals on human lives, health, and psychological well-being has grown in recent years. According to studies on human–animal interactions, people frequently develop close bonds with their pets. Ownership of a pet has occasionally been linked to improved mental and physical health in both adults and children.
An increasing amount of research suggests that interactions between humans and animals may have therapeutic advantages. It is significant to highlight that, to until, the majority of study in this area has been on the interactions between adult human owners and their pets; as a result, possible advantages for children have frequently been extrapolated from adult research. On the other hand, children are frequently attributed with initiating the pet-owning process, and in many nations, households with children own more companion animals than homes without children. As a result, it is crucial to give young pet attachment—including its psychological foundation and potential effects on a child’s growth and wellbeing—more thought.
Origin of attachment
The field of ethology is where attachment theory first emerged, concentrating on the biological and evolutionary underpinnings of mother-child bonds. During a particularly vulnerable stage of life, the function of attachment allowed children to get food, warmth, shelter, and other resources by forcing them to seek out the presence of their caregiver. But later laboratory investigations, including those by Harlow and colleagues beginning in the 1950s, revealed the crucial role that these attachment relationships play in normal social and cognitive development.
Research on how social isolation affects primate behavior was one aspect of this. For instance, at 60, 90, or 120 days of age, baby rhesus macaques were permanently separated from their mothers in one study. The infants were then housed in one of two groups: either alone or in pairs. During the first two days of being separated, the baby monkeys in all groups exhibited anxiety and a “protest reaction.” Similar protest responses have been observed in a variety of primates since the publication of this report, including young humans. According to the social living settings, Suomi et al. discovered that the young monkeys exhibited distinct post-separation behaviors. During the week that followed their separation, monkeys kept alone showed less locomotor activity and higher levels of self-clasping behavior and disturbance activity, such as producing screeching or cooing vocalizations, or engaging in stereotypic behavior, such as rocking.
Similar behaviors were shown by monkeys raised alone from birth, just as by monkeys raised with their mother initially before being split off and placed in separate housing. These results provide vital proof that early social interaction and the establishment of attachment relationships influenced psychological growth and behavior in ways other than obtaining food, shelter, or other necessities for survival.
Other early research suggested that the attachment bond has additional developmental benefits. In another study, young rhesus macaques that had previously been imprinted onto a wire-cloth monkey replica were placed in an unusual setting called the open-field test. In this test, each monkey was left alone in a novel environment full of toys and objects that it could explore. Over the course of three-minute sessions, the monkeys demonstrated remarkably different behavior in the presence and absence of the inanimate wire-cloth surrogate. Harlow discovered that the monkeys could use the surrogate as a secure base, or a point of safety from which they could explore the environment.
Therefore, attachment security not only facilitated stress reduction, but also promoted exploration behaviors critical to an infant’s ability to learn about the environment through experience, an important step for developing independence.
Since then, a lot of these similar issues have been investigated in both experimental and realistic settings involving the human infant-caregiver connection. Ainsworth and Bell modified an open-field test to study child-caretaker attachment behavior in 1970; this test is now called the Strange Situation Test (SST). According to Ainsworth, every baby exhibited a relationship with their mother, but there were differences in the ways that babies expressed this attachment. Similar to the literature on non-human primates, it was suggested that a kid with a stable attachment might use their caregiver as a safe base from which to explore unfamiliar areas. This would enable the child to maintain a balance between contact and exploration while also giving them a place to return to in case of danger. Insecurely attached people were unable to use their caregiver in this manner.
A variety of long-term outcomes are believed to be predicted by childhood attachments, including those that are formed while the child is still an infant. For instance, having at least one secure attachment figure has been linked to better higher-order cognitive processes, such as working memory and inhibition, which are primarily associated with activity in frontal areas of the brain, less conflict in interpersonal relationships, including marriage and parenthood, and positive social interactions with potential partners. Increased aggression, a higher risk of anxiety disorders, and a tendency toward independence—sometimes at the expense of interpersonal relationships—have all been linked to insecure attachments. As a result, a child’s ability to create a solid, secure connection to one or more people may have significant behavioral, psychological, and developmental ramifications.
Child attachment to pets
The presence of adults in a child’s life appears to have a major influence on the degree of attachment that kids have to their pets. For instance, there is compelling evidence that children who are single have stronger relationships to their favorite family pet than children who have siblings, according to a UK study that used the validated CENSHARE Pet Attachment Scale. According to a second Australian study by Bodsworth and Coleman, kids raised by single parents had stronger attachments to their pet dogs than kids raised by two parents (measured by parents using a previously validated Companion Animal Bonding Scale to assess their kids’ attachment levels).
Furthermore, there was a trend toward stronger attachment in the single-parent group for the middle childhood group (ages 7–12) and significantly stronger attachments in the early childhood group (ages 3–6) raised by a single parent compared to the early childhood group raised in a two-parent home.
A number of further studies have also discovered intriguing relationships between age and the degree of a child’s attachment to a pet. Research by Westgarth et al. showed that the youngest child in households with several children usually had the strongest bond with the family pet. Children’s attachment to their pets grew less as they got older, according to a Croatian study that used child self-reports on a Child Pet Attachment Scale questionnaire.
In situations where there has been child maltreatment or neglect, there may be an even greater correlation between the amount of time spent bonding with people and the degree of pet attachment. For instance, reports of a stable attachment to a pet, particularly a dog or cat, were four times more common than reports of a secure attachment to their human caregiver in a research involving 160 children who had suffered abuse, neglect, or traumatic loss. Only adult populations have been the subject of more research on the effects of childhood neglect on attachments to companion animals. According to one study, women who said they had been neglected as children showed somewhat stronger attachments to companion animals in the present on the Pet Attachment and Life Impact Scale (PALS).
It is worth noting that gender differences in reported attachment to companion animals were found in the sample of college students aged 18–62 years, and in at least one other study, although not all studies have reported gender differences.
Comparably, a number of adult studies have assessed the correlation between the degree of attachment to a companion animal and dissociation experiences, which are characterized as “a separation between processes that are normally integrated, such as events, emotions, and memories” and can be brought on by severe trauma, particularly abuse during childhood. For instance, Brown and Katcher’s study of college students revealed a positive correlation between the adult subjects’ attachments to companion animals and their levels of dissociation. Two groups of college students were found to have low versus high levels of dissociation in the results of a study by Barlow et al. They also discovered that a separate sample of women with clinically diagnosed dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition where an individual presents with two or more distinct personality states or identities, had significantly stronger attachments to companion animals than both of the groups of college students, as measured by the Pet Attachment and Life Impact Scale (PALS). No men with DID took part in the study.
The evidence suggests that adults who experienced abuse as children may be more likely to develop stronger attachments to companion animals, possibly as a result of unmet needs they had as children for healthy relationships with humans, assuming that dissociation and DID may be linked to childhood abuse. Nevertheless, no research has examined the degree to which child abuse victims form strong attachments to companion animals when they are still young, or the ways in which a strong pet attachment can mitigate negative consequences or support therapeutic interventions for survivors of child abuse. These could be significant research topics in the future.
Possible dangers
Notwithstanding the benefits of pet attachment that have been demonstrated and theorized, it’s crucial to take into account any possible concerns related to interactions and relationships between humans and animals. According to one survey-based study, older persons who were more attached to their pets also reported higher levels of depression than older adults who were less attached to their pets. Compared to people with weaker attachments, those with stronger attachments to their pets expressed more intense grief after the pet’s death. When their pet passed away, those who suffered from higher levels of attachment anxiety also felt more intense bereavement. The hallmark of attachment anxiety is excessive concern over losing or being rejected by an attachment figure.
As the study’s authors clarify, this result makes sense in light of Bowlby’s theory, which contends that people who have anxious attachment styles will struggle more to control their emotions when they lose an attachment figure. Similar findings were made by another study about the relationship between attachment and grieving over the loss of an assistance dog. This finding may become more significant for kids as the number of assistance dogs placed with kids rises (e.g., autistic assistance dogs). Many owners stated that they did not regret the close relationship they had with their dogs, even in spite of going through this sadness. Although these variables have not been investigated in pediatric settings, they are crucial components to take into account when assessing the overall psychological effects of childhood pet attachment, especially given that the first experience many children have with death is through the death of a pet.
Research has demonstrated that people with traumatic childhoods are at risk for abnormally severe grief responses to the loss of a person, including “negative physical and psychological outcomes such as serious illness, suicidal ideation, and impairments in quality of life.” Some have suggested that the grief response to the death of a pet can be comparable to the loss of a human loved one.
Possible advantages
It has been demonstrated that human-pet relationships offer at least some significant physiological and psychological advantages. Research on adult participants has identified many of these impacts; nevertheless, research on youngsters has also revealed comparable findings. For instance, it is commonly known that having a pet, especially a dog, lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease in adults. According to a different study, having a pet lowers systolic blood pressure. A more recent study shows that after engaging with their cats, cat owners’ heart rates decrease in association with their level of attachment (as determined by the LAPS).
When compared to controls, it has been seen that the secure base effect and reduced blood pressure occur when one is thinking about or actually possesses a pet dog, even in the midst of a challenging cognitive exercise intended to induce elevated stress. Significantly, the security of the attachment relationship indicated by the owner was linked to the ability of pets to serve as a safe haven and secure base for their owners in this study. It has also been demonstrated that engaging in activities with animals helps treat and manage depression.
Conclusion
Stronger attachment bonds between children and dogs are linked to a number of variables, such as the presence of adult human attachment models, the number and order of siblings, a history of abuse or neglect, and the dog’s reactivity to the child’s behavior. Even though there is still a lot to learn about this topic, research to date appears to point to a strong basis for future scientific discoveries in this field. Additionally, given the widespread and growing number of pets that live in homes with children worldwide, it appears that pet-child relationships may be an area of growing applied importance. Furthermore, the increasing number of child-focused AATs and therapies highlights the urgent need for additional scientific studies targeted at this demographic. Further investigation exploring the psychological underpinnings and mechanisms associated with childhood attachment to pets will also facilitate a deeper understanding of why and how these relationships form, and how similar or different they may be to attachment relationships shared between children and other humans.
