I think I brought up about the correlation between religiosity and attitudes to dogs and dog-keeping. This might not always be the case but it seems parsimonious that with in many, if not most places the younger generation’s more secular than the older and have more sentimental attitudes to animals than the oldsters do most especially marked in culturally Christian or Muslim countries.
As expected, these are more likely to be childless fur parents. Again not necessarily always the case either but makes sense if you add in the degree of religiosity. A good number of Christians (and probably Muslims) are wary of lay believers, especially if they don’t follow God closely. Which includes displacing devotion to him to other things. This is what got churches and mosques into demonising distractions.
Not just with cats but also with dogs since they’re disliked in both Christianity and Islam. The Bible has a low opinion of them and like I said, it can be used to justify cynophobia like others use to justify homophobia. I won’t be surprised if stronger sentimental attachment to dogs correlates with lower religiosity.
Now here’s an excerpt from this article which proves my point:
Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University said, “Pets are becoming a replacement for children.” Her research on the “the entitlement generation” has been published in a book called Generation Me.
Apparently it’s more than just anecdotal. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document a considerable decline in babies born to women between the ages of 15 and 29. A parallel statistic shows an enormous increase in ownership of small dogs among millennial women.
The American Pet Products Association says the number of small dogs — under 25 pounds — in the United States has skyrocketed, from 34.1 million in 2008 to 40.8 million in 2012. Pampering them is up too. They also found that sales of premium dog food has grown more than 170 percent in the last 15 years, now accounting for 57 percent of the market.
Conservative commentator Dennis Prager says there had always been throughout history three social realities driving the birth of children: a lack of contraception, the economic necessity for children to care for parents in old age, and religion. Prager points out that contraception has changed the way couples approach the act of sex; plus government entities like social security and welfare now care for senior citizens so children don’t have to. He believes the decline of the centrality of religion in many American lives today removed one of the main propelling forces for the values inherent in parenthood.
Unsurprisingly I thought of this before and this should be studied more seriously. Given a good number of churches (especially in parts of Cameroon, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia) demonise dogs, it’s parsimonious that it does confirm suspicions of idolatry and Biblical and Koranic disdain for dogs.
fynm 