Cecilie1200
Diamond Member
Well, another Mothers' Day has come and gone, and yet again my social media has exploded with benighted yahoos blathering on about "I'm a mother too; my pets are my children" and "Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there (fur babies count too!)", etc. ad nauseam.
May I interject a little curmudgeonly reality here (I won't say "Can I" because I think we all know I'm fully capable of it)? Leaving aside the sickeningly cutesy-poo label of "fur babies" for a moment, let me just state this categorically: they are not "your children". They are pets. And you are a pet owner, not a mother. As an ACTUAL mother, I am out of patience with pretending not to be offended by softheaded dimwits trying to draw an equivalency between my relationship with my children and theirs with their cat, dog, [fill in the fuzzy lower lifeform here].
We celebrate Mothers' Day for a reason. Being a mother is a huge, complicated, often-painful, lifelong undertaking. You bring forth an actual human being from your own body, through your blood, sweat, and pain (or, in the case of adoptive mothers, you take on the responsibilities of a child who has no one else in the world through an expensive, emotionally-agonizing legal process which typically takes far longer than an actual pregnancy does). If you're any kind of decent mother, that little human being becomes more important to you than anything else in the world, including yourself. You feel more joy at their accomplishments than you ever have at your own, you bleed inside every time they're hurt, you rearrange your entire existence around their care and nurturing. And if, God forbid, they die before you do, you carry that heartbreak with you every day forever.
We don't celebrate Pet Owners Day (or "Fur Mommies Day", if you insist) for a reason. You spend a half-hour to an hour filling out paperwork (maybe more, if the animal is pedigreed), hand over some cash, and ta daaah! You buy some food and toys, take them to the veterinarian once in a while, and you pet them while you watch TV. One assumes that you get upset if they get sick or injured (I'd certainly like to believe no one here is so heartless as to not care), but if you really believe it compares to the tortures of the damned experienced by actual parents of actual children who are in the hospital, you're delusional. And WHEN they die before you do (because pets generally have a significantly shorter lifespan than humans), you cry and feel sad and depressed (again, one hopes), and then you eventually get another pet.
Know how I know "fur babies" aren't the equivalent of children? Ask yourself what your reaction would be if your dog was diagnosed with metastasized cancer. Would you go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for chemo or radiation therapy and multiple operations to extend his life? Or would you have the vet put him to sleep? Now ask yourself the same question if your child was diagnosed with the same cancer.
"Fur mommies" are basically just trying to horn in on the attention and adulation being handed out, without making the commitment. Let's just state that baldly. They want the status without putting in the work. And I am tired of hearing it. No, your "babies" are not just like my children; none of MY children have ever sat in the middle of the living room floor with company over and licked their own genitals, all right?
May I interject a little curmudgeonly reality here (I won't say "Can I" because I think we all know I'm fully capable of it)? Leaving aside the sickeningly cutesy-poo label of "fur babies" for a moment, let me just state this categorically: they are not "your children". They are pets. And you are a pet owner, not a mother. As an ACTUAL mother, I am out of patience with pretending not to be offended by softheaded dimwits trying to draw an equivalency between my relationship with my children and theirs with their cat, dog, [fill in the fuzzy lower lifeform here].
We celebrate Mothers' Day for a reason. Being a mother is a huge, complicated, often-painful, lifelong undertaking. You bring forth an actual human being from your own body, through your blood, sweat, and pain (or, in the case of adoptive mothers, you take on the responsibilities of a child who has no one else in the world through an expensive, emotionally-agonizing legal process which typically takes far longer than an actual pregnancy does). If you're any kind of decent mother, that little human being becomes more important to you than anything else in the world, including yourself. You feel more joy at their accomplishments than you ever have at your own, you bleed inside every time they're hurt, you rearrange your entire existence around their care and nurturing. And if, God forbid, they die before you do, you carry that heartbreak with you every day forever.
We don't celebrate Pet Owners Day (or "Fur Mommies Day", if you insist) for a reason. You spend a half-hour to an hour filling out paperwork (maybe more, if the animal is pedigreed), hand over some cash, and ta daaah! You buy some food and toys, take them to the veterinarian once in a while, and you pet them while you watch TV. One assumes that you get upset if they get sick or injured (I'd certainly like to believe no one here is so heartless as to not care), but if you really believe it compares to the tortures of the damned experienced by actual parents of actual children who are in the hospital, you're delusional. And WHEN they die before you do (because pets generally have a significantly shorter lifespan than humans), you cry and feel sad and depressed (again, one hopes), and then you eventually get another pet.
Know how I know "fur babies" aren't the equivalent of children? Ask yourself what your reaction would be if your dog was diagnosed with metastasized cancer. Would you go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for chemo or radiation therapy and multiple operations to extend his life? Or would you have the vet put him to sleep? Now ask yourself the same question if your child was diagnosed with the same cancer.
"Fur mommies" are basically just trying to horn in on the attention and adulation being handed out, without making the commitment. Let's just state that baldly. They want the status without putting in the work. And I am tired of hearing it. No, your "babies" are not just like my children; none of MY children have ever sat in the middle of the living room floor with company over and licked their own genitals, all right?
You're the one who just wrote a lengthy rant about being offended, not me. I said I wasn't offended. I speak from experience, as both a mother and a grandmother and of course a daughter, and it wasn't cynical so much as true. The biological outcome of repeated sexual encounters doesn't make us anything special.
