Millennials love their pets more than their siblings, new study claims

26 May 2022, 15:23

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

A new study has revealed 57 per cent of millennials between 27 and 42-years-old love their pets more than their siblings.

It’s probably no surprise to anyone that a study of millennials found that they love their pets more than their siblings.

Researchers at ConsumerAffairs, a customer review and consumer news platform, spoke to 1,000 pet owners, nearly half of which were millennials between 27 and 42-years-old.

They then asked the participants how they rank their fury friends against family members.

While the results show that the majority of millennials in the group (81 per cent) love their pets more than at least one family member, over half admitted this was the case for their own brothers and sisters.

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A statement reads: "The study began with a heavy hitter: Which family members do you love less than your pet? To get a sense of how things may look in the future, we also asked respondents whether they’d rather have animals than human children of their own.

"The vast majority (81 per cent) of millennials admitted to loving their pets more than at least one family member — and this doesn’t mean a weird uncle or an estranged cousin.

"Our survey showed it was actually most often their own siblings: 57 per cent loved their pets more than their brother or sister, and exactly half claimed to love their pets more than their own mother.

"Even romantic partners still came second to a pet for 30 per cent of respondents.

"Previous studies have shown that millennials are less likely to own homes and have children than the generations before them. Evidently, pets may have a lot to do with this.

"58 percent of millennials said they’d prefer to have pets over human children. This was especially true for cat owners, among whom the percentage jumped to 63 per cent."

The statement also adds that if millennials couldn’t afford life-saving treatment for their animal, they would consider getting a second job (49 per cent) or selling their things such as TVs, laptops or jewellry.