magine a world in which, from the standpoint of adults, the differences between pets and children had for all practical purposes had disappeared.  Presumably, some differences would prevail.  Human beings cannot, for instance, give birth to dogs or cats or rabbits or what have you; whereas human beings can give birth to human infants.  And one imagines that, even in a world where having test-tube babies is a complete option, parents of children will generally prefer giving birth to their children. 

What I am asking you to imagine, however, is a world in which from the standpoint of the child, there is not much difference between the way the child is treated by his parents and the way in which the parents treat the pet of the home—a dog, say.  The child is well-fed; the pet is well-fed.  Indeed, just as the parents would not dream of simply giving the child scraps off the table, they would not dream of giving scraps off the table to the dog.  Quite the contrary, they buy nothing but the best for the dog.

The child receives excellent medical care; the dog receives excellent medical care. 

The child has a very expensive nanny or quite expensive daycare arrangements.  Thus, the parents can attend to their very successful business with the confidence that their child is receiving the very best care possible.  And guess what: excellent arrangements are made for caring for the dog when the parents and child must be away. 

The child is sent to private schools; and the dog is routinely a part of a special training and grooming program. 

There are, to be sure, ineliminable differences between the child and the dog.  After all, the parents have conversations with the child and not the dog.  They talk to the child about her future; and not to the dog about its future.  Indeed, the dog is not in their will; whereas the child is. 

Still, there is this unsettling thought.  Just as no expense has been spared in caring for the dog, no expense has been spared in caring for the child.  But wait a minute.  Shouldn’t the point that I have just made go the other way around: “Just as no expense has been spared in caring for the child, no expense has been spared in caring for the dog”.  After all, isn’t there some fundamentally important sense in which the child is supposed to be ontologically prior to the dog?

But the question that I am asking, alas, is this: Given the way in which parents care for the family pet and the way in which parents care for their child, do the parents actually underwrite the ontological priority of the child?  Both the child and the pet eat well.  They both have excellent medical care.  Moreover, for both the dog and the child (Surely the order does not really matter, right?) no expense is spared in having someone to attend to them while the parents carry on with their lives.  To be sure, the dog may not quite need daily daycare, but if the dog did the parents would most certainly provide it. 

I assume that, morally speaking, parents should child value their child more than the family pet.  The question is this: What should parents do in terms of how they treat their child, on the one hand, and how they treat the family pet, on the other hand, that would underwrite the child’s conviction that her parents value her more than they value the family pet? 

Most significantly, the answer cannot be simply that the parents spend more money on the child than they do the family pet.  For suppose that the family has two pets: a dog and a gold fish.  The care required by a dog is far more expensive than care required by a gold fish.  From this truth, however, what surely does not follow is that the family values the dog more than the gold fish.  So while it is true that more money is spent on the child than the dog, it does not thereby follow that this is enough to establish in the child’s mind that the parents care more for her than they do the family dog. 

Now, it is my view that, between a child and the family dog, there should never even be the slightest doubt on the child’s part that she has first-place in the hearts of her parents.  And my very problem with modernity is that it is undermining the possibility of children having this simple conviction. 

What is the difference between, on the hand, giving birth to a child and then putting it into daycare a mere 6 weeks later while one is at work and, on the other, buying a pedigree puppy and then putting into a first-class kennel service while one is at work? 

Many seem to think that it would be wrong to bring a puppy home and then, from the very outset, leave it alone while one goes to work.  Of course, many have the same view with regard to a newborn infant.  Surely, the fact that daycare service is more expensive than daily kennel service hardly establishes that the parents accord the child far greater moral weight than they accord the puppy. 

It is a defining feature of human beings that their conviction that they are valued by another is inextricably tied to the experiences that they have with that other person.  And, alas, little things make all the difference in the world.  Indeed, the accumulative effect of the right set of little things is none other than a tidal wave of affirmation. 

Modernity has allowed people to entertain the delusion that the amount of money an individual spends on another suffices as a clear measure of that person’s love for the other.  But it is only a delusion.  To see this, consider the following example.

Suppose that I claim that you are my best friend.  Whenever we go out for a meal, I invariably pick pay for diner—no matter what the price tag.  That is, no doubt, very nice of me.  There is only one small problem.  I never call you or otherwise initial contact with you.  Rather, if you did not call me, then there would be very little contact between us.  True, I am always gracious when you call.  But I never make a point of contacting you.  Not by phone; not by email.  Well, to put the matter quite simply: You would be a fool to believe that I really regard you as my best friend, merely because I always pick up the check. 

It is interesting to me that just about everyone immediately sees the truth of preceding example.  Yet, many people who unequivocally grasp that point somehow manage to think that the proof that they love their children is shown by the amount of money they spend on daycare or nanny-care for them.  I claim that no child will really think that—the child’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is, I believe, no emptiness on the face of this earth like the emptiness that comes with not having been loved by one’s parents. 

Once upon a time, modes of parental behavior at every turn would have affirmed the moral worth of the child over the family pet, making it utterly otiose for the parents to have to point to the sums of money that they spend on their child as evidence of their love for the child. 

That so many parents nowadays take money spent on the child as a measure of their love for the child is precisely what gives the question with which I opened this essay the very plausibility that it has—so much so that we no longer have to imagine the possibility of the moral difference between the child and the family pet being obliterated.  No, the absence of a moral difference between the two has become a reality in way too many instances.

It is not enough that parents are clear about the difference between their child and the family pet.  Nothing is more important to child development than that the child comes to be equally clear about the difference, where the parental embodiment of that difference is that the child is valued vastly more than the family pet.