I’ll start this post with a few embarrassing admissions:
- I love reading Refinery29’s Money Diaries, in which an anonymous person records all their spending—and often everything they do and think—for a week.
- Sometimes I comment on them, even though I’m generally against internet comments. For some reason I love knowing what strangers spend money on, and I’ll often comment with something I find particularly interesting.
- This week, I made a comment that I knew I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help it- the writer said something in her diary that made me feel a bunch of feelings, and i internalized it.
The writer, who doesn’t have any children, was packing up to visit a friend one day with her dog. Because she had to pack food and other dog supplies, she wrote “having a dog is like having a baby.”
Here comes the most humiliating part: I commented. I said, “it’s not like having a baby.”
As I wrote the comment, I felt in my bones that it was kind of mean. Not troll-like or cruel, but dismissive and annoying. And yet, my little fingers couldn’t help it. Because that statement, “having a dog is like having a baby,” is also dismissive and annoying.
Yes, I realize the writer of the random money diary in an online millennial-focused publication, who may or may not be a real human person, made that statement on the fly. I’m sure she didn’t really MEAN it in the literal sense. Yes, there are much more important things in this world to worry about. And yes, I’m making this about me and taking a random anonymous internet statement personally when it has nothing to do with me.
And yet… it pushed my buttons. One other commenter said something like, she doesn’t mean that they’re similar in ALL ways, just that there are parallels. Another said that taking care of her baby is easier than taking care of her puppy.
OK, sure. I have a 7-year-old dog who was once a puppy, along with a 3-year-old son and a 2-year old daughter. Maybe there are times when taking care of a dog baby is harder, in a way, than taking care of a human baby, depending on the puppy and depending on the baby. When my dog was a puppy, he chewed through my computer cords and got me in trouble at work. Once, when I left him at a doggy camp when I went on vacation, he misbehaved and got kicked out. My kids have never chewed through my computer cords and they haven’t been kicked out of daycare (yet) (my son is pushing his luck with his spitting phase).
And sure, there are times when having a puppy is like having a baby: Maybe you have to wake multiple times per night to take the dog out to pee, and maybe you’re really focused on making sure they get enough to eat those first few months.
But having a dog is so, so different from having a baby (or older child, for that matter).
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of how having a baby is not like having a dog —at least for me:
- The stakes of having a baby are existentially and exponentially higher.
- It’s very important to feed both babies and dogs. But feeding dogs typically involves pouring food and water into bowls a few times a day, or if the dog is very lucky, perhaps cooking or heating up some fancy chicken- or fish-based fancy dog food. Feeding babies involves either breastfeeding—which is a full-time job, the hardest thing I’ve ever done/attempted to do, and often physically excruciating—or giving them formula every two hours or so, which involves deciding which of the many options is best for your baby, getting them to take a bottle, figuring out the correct temperature, and internalizing the mom guilt associated with not breastfeeding. With both options, you then move on to solid foods after a few months, also fraught with mistakes, guilt, crying children, etc.
- It’s important for both babies and dogs to sleep. Babies wake you up every two to six hours for the first many months of their lives, crying for food and cuddles and diaper changes and who knows what else, often not going back to sleep for hours. Puppies may wake you up sometimes, too, and that’s annoying, but come on. I don’t need to explain how different it is from having a newborn child.
- Babies cannot under any circumstances be left alone for even a minute.
- If you work outside the home, you spend thousands of dollars per month for quality childcare for your baby/toddler/kid who isn’t yet in kindergarten. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, that’s more than a full-time job and one of the most physically and emotionally taxing jobs that exist. If there’s such a thing as a stay-at-home dog parent, that’s well, that’s a pretty sweet and easy job.
- If you have a dog and go on vacation, you need to find someone to watch him/her. If you have a baby and go on vacation… oh wait, you can’t go on vacation, because you need to stay home and take care of your baby.
- My identity is wrapped around being a mom, and hopefully being a good mom. I’m either taking care of my kids or thinking about taking care of them almost 100% of the time.
So, to conclude: I’m annoyed with myself for being the person to comment “having a dog is not like having a baby.” And I’m annoyed with myself for getting so wrapped up in one line in a Money Diary that surely wasn’t serious or literal. File it under personal pet peeves, I guess.
Now that I’ve written a manifesto about it, I’ll go pour some food in my dog’s bowl, spend 30 minutes cooking my children a nutritious meal and an hour trying to convince them to eat it. After they eat a few bites, I’ll give up and throw 90% of it into the dog’s bowl, then give in to the kids’ demands for two popsicles each, and move on.