In December 2020, nine months after finding out I would never bear a biological child, my husband and I brought home a sweet 11-month-old from Cobham. We followed a strict settling-in regime and, for the first two weeks, we took turns sleeping on lilos on the floor next to her. A year on, Sybil is happy, confident and loved by our entire extended family. She is also a golden retriever.
When Pope Francis called pet ownership “selfish” during a general audience at the Vatican – also “a denial of fatherhood and motherhood [that] diminishes us, [and] takes away our humanity”, which seems a bit on the harsh side – there was the same uproar among pet owners that comes whenever anyone calls us selfish or uses the dreaded American phrase “fur babies”. As one owner drily put it: “The old guy with no children. Sure, he knows best.” No pets, either.
When the Pope said that people were choosing pets over parenthood, it felt very much as though he was missing the point. There are so many reasons why someone may not have a child (whither the Pope’s utterances on the…
