In some countries, the number of dogs has increased so much that it now exceeds the number of children. While the emotional significance of dogs is clearly rising worldwide, it remains uncertain whether people are choosing to keep dogs instead of having children or whether other factors are driving this trend.
“The number of children is not declining because the number of dogs is increasing, but the same trend lies behind both phenomena: the transformation of social networks,” argues Kubinyi.
“My concept, referred to as the companion animal, or more specifically, the companion dog runaway theory, suggests that the popularity of dogs is rooted in biological evolutionary causes, but it has culturally escalated, ‘run away.’ The caregiving instinct and the need for social support are genetically encoded in human behavior, but these drives have shifted toward companion animals because human relationships are often damaged or absent.
Are dogs the new children? Birth rates and dog ownership analyzed in study
I had an idea of this but didn’t know the extent of it.