Pet Parenthood

The Battle for a Better Kind of Love

Like many children, I harbored secret suspicions that I was adopted. I fully expected my parents to sit me down one day to have “the talk.” But that day never came.

By the time my maternal grandmother died, I was about to start high school and had long since forgotten that suspicion. I’d finally accepted my biological relation to my parents after seeing an old photo of my mother as a young girl; she was a near-identical, black-and-white version of me.

Sitting outside the church sanctuary as my grandma’s friends filed in for the funeral service, a woman approached my mom and accidentally revealed a secret. Though I hadn’t picked up on the clue in the moment, my mom later sat down next to me on the bench and finally confessed that she, in fact, had been adopted.

My head spun for a few moments as I processed the information. It seemed unfathomable; my mom shared her mother’s pale hair and eyes—they had to be blood-related. I thought back on the times I flipped through my grandmother’s ancestry journals, all the lost ties to relatives going back generations. Suddenly, it was all a mystery.

While I had suspected I was adopted, I never thought to question my parents’ genetic lineage. After my head stopped spinning, I moved on with my life the same as before. I still occasionally wonder about my mother’s biological parents and marvel at her good fortune to be adopted as a toddler—rather than an infant—by a woman and her husband, who would go on to become the mayor of their small Ohio town.

Because of this, I have ever since been supportive of adopting or fostering children rather than having them biologically. And after becoming vegan, becoming more invested in the health of our planet, and coming to terms with my asexuality, having children the traditional way seems unappealing. (Of course, there are very real barriers to adoption—cost, primarily—but I firmly believe those with the means to adopt, should.)

As a self-proclaimed “animal person,” adopting animals has always held more appeal to me than having children, and I consider my dog to be like a child to me. My heart swells at the sight of her running towards me, tail wagging; hearing her croon and bark is my personalized siren song.

Because I am child-free, and intend to remain so, what I feel for my dog is the height of love for me. I will never love a child like a mother loves her child.

For me, there is no love greater than what I feel for my dog.

Yet when I hear mothers demean so-called “pet parents” by saying that they, in fact, feel the highest form of love because they have real children, I wonder, Since when is this a contest? In analogizing having a dog to having a child, “pet parents” aren’t trying to take away the love mothers feel for their children; rather, it’s a way of relating to that motherhood-style love, to share in the joy of the lives we nurture and protect.

There seems to be a need to prove that motherhood is the superior, ultimate form of love, even though no one’s trying to disprove that. Like I mentioned when I discussed asexuality, love is not binary. Love is experienced and expressed in infinite ways. Trying to quash the love someone else feels by telling them it is inferior to one’s own is counterproductive; it’s an argument that can never be won outside of an echo chamber.

This motherhood-superiority defense is often bolstered by the connection mothers feel to the fetus, a special bond that grows as the life grows within them. (Again, no one is trying to deny this.) Then, sometimes, they remember that adoptive parents are parents too.

I will never know what it’s like to have a child, biological or adoptive. But I hope my life is filled with rescued animals, so I can share my love with them and care for them as fiercely as I would a child. Similarly, my mom will never know what it’s like to have biological parents, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t loved by the parents who adopted her.

Battles over who loves who more are not just counterintuitive but actively create rifts between us. Rather than duking it out, can’t we celebrate that we’re offering our love to those who need it? Isn’t that enough?

be conscious, be kind, be vegan