Animals in Childhood Development: What animals teach children (#346)

In the modern Western world, animals play a central role in childhood.

From the moment a baby is born, animals surround them in symbolic and physical form. Plush bears and bunnies are often their first toys. Their clothes, blankets, prams, and wallpaper are decorated with smiling lions, elephants, and foxes. Storybooks, television shows, and films for children are overwhelmingly populated by animals, often imbued with human traits, emotions, and moral lessons.

Real animals are also part of a child’s world. Visits to zoos, aquariums, and wildlife parks are common. Animal documentaries captivate many children, and most either have a pet or wish they did. Studies consistently show that families with children are the most likely to own companion animals. Over 90% of children who don’t have a pet express a desire for one.

Animals are often viewed as natural companions for children. They’re believed to teach responsibility, encourage empathy, and offer comfort and affection.

But how accurate are these assumptions?

What do animals really teach children, and what do our attitudes toward child-animal relationships reveal about us?

A Manufactured Bond with Deep Roots

While it may feel timeless, the close relationship between children and animals, especially pets, is a relatively recent cultural development. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, middle-class Victorians began promoting pet-keeping among boys as a moral corrective. The aim was to cultivate gentleness, empathy, and self-control and to suppress cruelty, which was believed to be a natural male trait.

This idea, known as the graduation hypothesis, argued that allowing children to be cruel to animals would desensitize them to suffering or even awaken a taste for violence. On the other hand, caring for pets could instill moral character. Pets were seen not as moral agents, but as moral tools. Models of loyalty, selflessness, and resilience.

Coexisting with this view was a darker belief: that children were innately wild and needed strict discipline to become civilized. Though uncommonly voiced today, echoes of this ideology remain, particularly in research exploring links between animal abuse and family violence.

Studies have shown correlations between childhood harm toward animals and later attitudes toward interpersonal violence. For instance, children who reported abusing pets were more likely to find domestic violence or corporal punishment acceptable in adulthood. These behaviors often mirrored those of their parents, with boys modeling fathers, girls modeling mothers.

Parental influence seems to be a major factor. A child who grows up in a home where animals are loved and respected is more likely to carry those values into adulthood. However, some researchers also suggest that certain children may have an empathy deficit from the start, making them more prone to cruelty, regardless of upbringing.

Fear is another component. Fear of animals is second only to fear of the dark in childhood. Some argue that these fears are instinctive. Others believe they are learned from parents or shaped by early trauma. Freud saw feared animals as symbolic stand-ins for authority figures or suppressed aggressive feelings. These early experiences can influence future attitudes, whether of affection, ambivalence, or aversion.

In the 1960s, child psychologist Boris Levinson made an important discovery. When withdrawn or emotionally disturbed children refused to engage with him, they often responded warmly to his dog, Jingles. Levinson saw that the pet served as a kind of emotional bridge. A safe, nonjudgmental presence that helped children begin to form human connections again.

Other therapists have observed similar effects. Pets can help children project their fears and worries in symbolic form. One psychologist reported a child fixated on her guinea pigs fighting over a younger one, only later learning the child’s parents were in a paternity dispute. Animals, in these cases, became a language through which children can safely communicate.

Research confirms that children often turn to pets during times of distress, boredom, or loneliness. In these moments, pets act as transitional objects, like a favorite blanket or toy, but with the added benefit of affection and responsiveness. Such interactions can temporarily boost emotional resilience and provide comfort.

Despite how common and culturally significant animals are in children’s lives, psychology has been slow to study the child-animal bond seriously. Most textbooks in child development give the topic only passing mention. Scholar Norman Myers argues this neglect reflects a deeper bias: the belief that childhood is a process of shedding animal-like qualities in the journey to full, rational adulthood.

But this ignores the unique ways children engage with the world, often through nonverbal, bodily, and emotional experiences, which animal interactions naturally support. A tadpole is not just an incomplete frog. It is perfectly adapted to its stage of life. The same is true of children.

Interactions with animals may offer children developmental opportunities unavailable through other means. They may learn empathy, responsibility, communication, and emotional regulation. They may also come to understand life, death, and care in deeply personal ways. The full extent of these benefits is still unknown, and urgently worth exploring.

Rick’s Commentary

Children’s picture books are perhaps the clearest expression of society’s belief in the child-animal bond.

These stories introduce animals as friends, heroes, tricksters, and guides. They use animals to teach courage, kindness, cooperation, and resilience. Animals are not just characters; they are moral messengers.

When created with care and realism, picture books can also nurture respect for the natural world and the creatures within it.

They provide not just entertainment, but a framework for understanding emotions, relationships, and ethical behavior.

As authors, illustrators, educators, and parents, we have a responsibility to recognize the influence of these stories. They shape the way children relate to animals, and through that, to themselves and the world around them.

The role of animals in childhood development is complex, cultural, emotional, and still under-explored.

What we do know is that children often reach toward animals on their own, seeking affection, meaning, and understanding. Whether through play, literature, or lived experience, animals teach children in ways adults often overlook.

We would be wise to take those lessons seriously.

To do so is not to romanticize animals or idealize childhood, but to recognize the deep and evolving connection between them, and to ask, more clearly and carefully, what that connection is really teaching us all.

#bunyipsbooksbeyond