Last month as part of the Luckie Family Panel, we asked a number of questions about family pets. We asked some typical questions – “Does your family have a pet, how many pets and what kind?” But we also asked a couple of interesting questions about whose idea was it to get a pet, and whether that was a good idea or not. And of course we asked the question that every parent already knows the answer to – who really takes care of the family pet?
For the purposes of the survey, we defined a pet as any animal living in your household that has a name. 73.7% of families reported having at least one pet, with 26.7% of families having just one pet, 21.5% having just two, and a surprising (to me, at least) 10.2% having five or more pets.
Three interesting pet ownership tidbits arose: Republicans were more likely than Democrats to have a family pet (75.3% to 68.8%); married parents more likely to have pets than single/divorced parents (77.5% vs 63.3%); and Southerners were more likely to be pet owners than people in any other region of the country (75.5%).
When it comes to types of pets, dogs had a substantial lead over cats, with 49.8% of households having a dog, versus. 34.9% with a cat. Third on the list were fish (10.6%), followed by single digit percentages for birds, reptiles, and hamster/gerbils. No one in this survey owned up to having a spider or an insect as a pet.
Speaking of dogs and cats, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be dog owners – 54.5% of Republicans owned dogs versus 43.8% of Democrats. That doesn’t mean Democrats are cat people – they have exactly the same percentage of cat ownership as Republicans – 32.5%. Democrats were actually more likely to be fish owners than Republicans (12.5% to 7.8%). Fish were also most popular in the Northeast, with 16.5% of families reporting a fish. That might be a reflection of more urban environments and tighter living quarters.
So, whose idea was it to get a pet? Clearly, it was Mom’s – 37.2% of moms say it was their idea to get a pet, versus 27.2% of dads. Dads are also quick to blame – I mean – give credit to their wives for the idea. 19.2% of dads said the pet was their spouse’s idea; just 10% of moms give credit to their spouse for the idea. 21.9% of the time, it was the kid’s idea. Other folks, such as grandparents and family friends, chimed in about 10% of the time.
Following up on that, we asked what people thought of their decision to get a pet. 40% of moms said they made a “great” decision, as opposed to 29.1% of dads. Dads were more likely to call it a “good” or “OK” decision, and 7.4% of dads actually thought it was a “bad” decision, as opposed to just 4.7% of moms.
The ambivalence of dads about the decision to get a pet doesn’t seem to be because they have to take care of them. Only 29.8% of dads report being the person who primarily takes care of the family pet, as opposed to 46% of moms. And in the most shocking finding of our survey, only 8% of households report that the kids actually take care of the family pet.
That finding is completely consistent with my experience. Frank, my daughter’s Betta fish, died sometime before Christmas, and she still hasn’t noticed he’s gone. Unless she reads all the way down to this point in the blog post, my guess is she won’t notice until she goes off to college this fall. And if she does find out that Frank’s gone by reading this post – well, sorry, honey.
Jay Waters is SVP/Chief Strategy Officer at Luckie & Company. You can contact him by email.
Photo credit: Plounsbury via Flickr
