Doing family in three – two partners and an animal companion

Abstract

ABSTRACT Animals have become increasingly integrated into the human home and family practices. This paper explores the changing role of animals in diverse Polish families. It demonstrates how the presence of ACs and common practices shape and polish couples' lives and influence doing and displaying family. To do so we explored the lives of diverse couples, those who do not yet have children, including LGBTQ families, and those whose children have left the family home, all of them living with ACs. We looked at their diversity through the prism of animals' role in everyday life practices and the interspecies bond being created. We found that in analysed projects ACs were given a high status in the familial hierarchy and played a central role in family everyday lives that can be named a separate phase in the family life course. Our goal was to describe the practices that constitute and express this uniqueness of doing interspecies family triangles/herds. For the everydayness of the interspecies family, the concept of family This paper describes how the emotional interspecies kinship is being practiced by human couples with ACs, who took part in our study.