“Phil’s Calling Grandma”

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates how both childless and childfree participants discussed the role that their own parents, partners, and sometimes siblings played in supporting their “parent” identities related to their dogs and cats. This confirmation was important to the maintenance of these familial identities. Childfree and childless people often feel stigmatized by society in general, even as American women increasingly delay childbirth or even opt out of having children entirely. Indeed, being without children is stigmatized. Being without children while also parenting animal “kids” can feel more stigmatized. This societal pushback is familiar to nontraditional families in general, but this chapter shows that a unique justification for social judgment of multispecies families without children lies in the multispecies nature of their families. The findings in this chapter reveal that support of the parent identity from significant others was both meaningful and important for the continued performance of parent identities and the emergence of new identities such as “partner,” “parent,” “grandparent,” and “aunt” and “uncle.”