By: Felicia Chen

On a bright summer afternoon, a dog runs up to its owner and jumps up and down. Wagging its tail and barking cheerfully, the dog joyously kisses its owner’s hands and face. Having a pet in a family comes with great benefits — not only for the parents, but also for their children.

Across the globe, people know that adding a pet as a new member of the family can be advantageous. From rekindling relationships to building camaraderie with children when they are alone, pets provide much strong, loving support to families.

Megan Mueller, an associate professor of human-animal interaction at Tufts University in Massachusetts, states, “It’s really important, especially for young kids, to learn that someone’s perspective might be different from their own. That’s an easier lesson to learn, perhaps, with an animal than it is with, say a sibling or a peer.”

The unbreakable connections developed between the child and its pet are formed based on how much time they spent with one another as well as the child’s age as another factor. In a BBC article, Kelly Oakes writes, “Children aged between six and 10 develop stronger bonds with animals that are more similar to humans, like cats and dogs, than with biologically far-removed species like birds and fish.” Additionally, an only child can especially benefit from having pets.

Positive results are noticeably seen in children as it has serendipitously influenced their social skills, physical health, and even cognitive development. Raising a forever companion is also associated with higher levels of empathy and reducing stress. Families with children with autism can particularly benefit by accompanying themselves with a pet to create a sociable, safe environment.

“We can actually say that children having pets and interacting with them over time in early childhood does seem to cause these added benefits in terms of their social-emotional development,” says Hayley Christian, an associate professor at the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Western Australia in Perth as well as a senior research fellow at the Telethon Kids Institute.

A study noted that when the children and dogs were in the same room, there were fewer mistakes made on an object-categorization task and the children did not require as many hints on a memory task.

In a separately-conducted research project, children ages 2 to 5 who had a family dog were more active, had less screen time, and slept more than those who did not have a pet – this resulted in a worthwhile experience in creating a healthy, well-balanced lifestyle in children.

According to a CBS news article, Ryan Jaslow wrote, “While respiratory infections and symptoms such as colds and wheezing are common in infants, an analysis revealed that babies who had early contact with dogs or cats were significantly healthier during the study and were 30 percent less likely to experience coughs, ear infections and symptoms such as stuffiness, runny nose, sneezing and congestion (rhinitis).”

Within the first few years of childhood, apparent improvements in resistance to infectious respiratory illnesses when in contact with an animal can be seen. According to a Guardian news report, a study published in JAMA Pediatrics “shows that children who had a dog in their first year of life were 13% less likely to develop asthma by the time they were six than those from dog-free households.” Thus, proving even further the many benefits pets can bring to a family.