Abstract
Evidence regarding the effects of pet ownership and related variables on youth socioemotional development is mixed. Inconsistencies across studies may be due to a variety of factors, including the use of different outcomes measured across studies, small potential effect sizes, and use of selected samples. In addition, studies have not systematically controlled for demographic characteristics that may bias results, nor have studies systematically examined whether effects are consistent across different subgroups. The present study examined the impact of pet ownership and attitudes toward pets on four measures of youth socioemotional outcomes: delinquency, depressed mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Linear mixed-effect regression analyses were conducted on 342 youth (48.0% male) aged 9–19 (M = 14.05, SD = 1.77) from a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse sample. The majority (59.1%) of youth currently lived with a dog or cat and all participants completed the Pet Attitude Scale-Modified. Pet owners reported lower delinquency and higher empathy than non-owners; however, group differences became non-significant once demographic factors were controlled for. Attitudes toward pets was significantly associated with all four outcomes. More positive attitudes was modestly associated with lower delinquency (β = -0.22, p < 0.001) and higher empathy (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), with smaller effects for depressed mood (β = -0.12, p = 0.04) and prosocial behavior (β = 0.12, p = 0.02). For delinquency, empathy, and prosocial behavior, effects were only slightly attenuated and remained statistically significant after controlling for gender, age, race/ethnicity, family socioeconomic status, and pet ownership, although the effect for depressed mood became non-significant after inclusion of these demographic factors. While there was some variability in effect sizes across different subgroups, none of the interactions between attitudes toward pets and gender, race/ethnicity, age, family SES, or pet ownership was statistically significant, indicating that the effects may transcend individual differences in demographic characteristics. Overall, the study adds to a growing body of work supporting a positive relationship between emotional bonds with pets and youth socioemotional outcomes and offers potential explanations for inconsistencies across previous studies.
Highlights
There is a high prevalence of pet ownership in the United States, with dogs and cats being the most common types of pets (American Pet Products Association [APPA], 2018)
A study of 7- to 8-year-old children reported that pets ranked higher as sources of social support than non-immediate family members such as aunts, uncles and grandparents, (McNicholas and Collis, 2000), while a study of 12-year olds found that children reported greater satisfaction with their relationships with pets than with their relationships with siblings (Cassels et al, 2017)
Missing Data Of the N = 378 youth who participated in the study, 31 youth had missing data on the Pet Attitude Scale-Modified (PAS-M) and 5 youth had missing data on pet ownership, resulting in a sample N = 342 for statistical analysis
Summary
There is a high prevalence of pet ownership in the United States, with dogs and cats being the most common types of pets (American Pet Products Association [APPA], 2018). Rhoades et al (2015) reported that pet-owning homeless youth reported less depression than non-pet-owning youth, but a large study of Australian adolescents did not find an association between pet ownership and a composite measure of child emotional, social, and school problems (Mathers et al, 2010). We have limited information as to whether the effects of pets on child development vary for children in different subgroups One reason for this gap is that prior research on the impact of pets in children has relied heavily on small sample sizes that lack diversity. Detailed measures of pet ownership and attitudes toward pets were added to a larger study of risk and protective factors for youth socioemotional and behavioral outcomes in a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse sample of urban and suburban youth aged 8–19.
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