Do dogs help children build better bonds?

A recent study found that children who feel close to their pet dogs are also more securely attached to their parents and have better bonds with their best friends. Researchers at Kent State University looked at 99 children ages nine to 11 who owned dogs. These children answered questionnaires about their relationships with their dogs, parents and friends.

The study found if one type of relationship was strong, it’s likely the others were, too. In general, children with strong bonds with their dogs also had strong bonds with their parents and best friends.

But which came first? Kathryn Kerns, a psychology professor at Kent State and one of the lead researchers, says they don’t know. It could be that caring for pets makes children feel closer to the significant humans in their lives, or it could be that their human relationships model how they should treat their pets. It could also be a reciprocal jumble: A positive experience with the pet leads to being more co-operative with parents, and that positive experience with parents leads to being closer to the pet, and so on.

The researchers also watched how the children interacted with their dogs. They found that those who had more physical contact with their pets had better relationships with their mothers — but not necessarily with their fathers (or friends).

“Given that mothers play a bit more of a role as a safe haven, as the one to go to for comfort, than dad, perhaps that’s why we found that effect,” Kerns says. “The close relationship with the mother might be more of a model for closeness with others, including the dog.”

Kerns and her team also did another study: How do pet dogs affect children’s emotions during stressful events?

The same 99 pre-adolescents were asked to deliver a five-minute autobiographical speech. The speech would be watched live by the experimenters, and, to up the stress factor, videotaped to be supposedly evaluated later.

Half the children had their dogs in the room. “Kids who had their dogs present felt much happier throughout the whole process,” Kerns says. Having physical contact with the dog — its chin on the child’s lap, or the dog leaning against the child — made the experience even less stressful.

In an unrelated study, children did a similar stress test either with a pet dog, with a parent or alone. The stress level was lowest when the children were with their dogs. Then there is a study on adults, who performed a stressful task with a pet dog, with a friend or alone. They were least stressed when they had their pet dogs with them. When alone, the stress level went up. And when with a friend, the stress level was highest of all.

“Humans can be judgmental in a way that dogs aren’t,” Kerns says. While we might worry a friend is evaluating our performance, a dog couldn’t care less.

Kerns and her team decided to study dogs because they have characteristics distinct from other pets: The ability to read emotions, loyalty and an affinity for physical contact. While other animals that allow for physical contact may offer similar benefits, like cats or even horses, the results probably wouldn’t hold up for more distant pets, like a fish.