“Meet the Petrents”

“You’re in love?” I asked the young professional who was nervously twiddling his thumbs.

“Naturally, Father! I’m so in love that I want to marry her now.”

“Has she introduced you to her pet goldfish,” Clyde was totally unprepared for this question.

“Do I literally have to know everything about her?”

“Maybe not… But enough to find out if you are the one.”

“Me? Why obviously I’m the one! How could her goldfish even be a problem?” He asked.

“Because she could end up choosing him instead!”

“Eeeiu!!!” He almost fell off his chair.

* * * * * *

Marrying one’s goldfish isn’t something unreal for many young millennials who no longer have marriage and having children as part of their agenda. Given their lifestyle options, they prefer to apply their nurturing desires to something tailored to a materialistic mindset: joining the ever-growing population of Petrents.

So what’s not cool about becoming a petrent? Except for people with allergies and phobias, I guess everyone has experienced the rewarding and therapeutic effects of caring for a dog, cat, fish, bird or even a Tamagotchi.

Caring for animals has been around since Adam and Eve were given the mission by God to care for creation. They were to subdue it, not in the abusive physical sense, but to polish what God had left man to further work on (i.e. giving the animals and plants their names, discerning their purpose, etc.). Then, it was very clear where the rest of created reality stood in relation to man.

Today, however, petrents believe that animals must be treated exactly like humans. They invest considerable amounts of money to coddle and dress their pets with fancy clothes, gadgets, and stilettoes. They feed them with human delicacies from ice-cream cones and doughnut-shaped dog cookies. And they wheelchair them to petospitals or pamper them in pet SPAws and grooming salons.

There is undoubtedly nothing wrong about caring for pets. And we even may sometimes extend, we cannot otherwise but act as humans, exaggerated degrees of affection and concern for them. For example, we talk to them, make faces at them and scold them. But petrenting manifests a very radical breed of caring and perception of the entire relationship between man and pets.

Having pets is better than having children. Obviously, animals require some troubleshooting only at the start. Weaning a puppy will take some time, but once the desired habit has set in, the dog is no longer a problem. Children, unfortunately, from childhood to adulthood present broader spectrum of complications. Humans require more time, more understanding, patience and support.

Animals may bite and scratch, but all that can be easily ‘caged’ and ‘conditioned’. Children, when they start to have more independence, present a greater and newer challenge. The trouble that human present are the unquantifiable or non-factored variables that millennial petrents are afraid to face and grow from. Caring for children removes them from their comfort zones and requires of them more than just material sacrifice.

But no matter how much petrents lavish their pets with love, these animals will never conceptualize love. They will only be capable of a conditioned behavior which petrents are only more than ready to reward.

Petrents will surely have their return of their pets’ discipline and affection. But they can never receive from them a new love that only another human being is capable of giving. It is only through caring for another human being, a child or an adult, that the ever-renewing exchange of love and sacrifice constantly brings out our genuine humanity.