Senior Project Advisor

Ten Eyck, Toby A.

Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Winter 2019

Keywords

Animals, Expenditures, Family, Money, Sociology

Abstract

The purpose of my paper is to highlight the rising expenditures on pets in the United States and to elucidate possible reasons behind this trend, considering the role(s) pets play within families especially in place of human counterparts. Robert K Merton's notion of latent and manifest functions provide the theoretical framework. I consider the popular works Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, John Grogan's Marley and Me, and the Disney film The Fox and the Hound, as well as turn to statistics regarding how much money people are spending on their pets and specific areas where that spending is increasing, such as food. The relationships between pets and their owners in these works are clear examples of the importance of pets in families, rationalizing the real-life trends considered here.

Department

Sociology

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Pets--United States--Costs; Human-animal relationships--United States; Pet owners--United States--Psychology

Geographic Coverage

United States

Genre/Form

student projects; term papers

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Rights Statement

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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Included in

Sociology Commons

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