Abstract
Studying relationships with animals in childhood illustrates cultural conceptions of animals as well as those about children and childhood. Similarly, childhood experiences related to animal death demonstrate associated rituals, practices, and conceptions. This chapter scrutinizes the memories of animal death in childhood, based on data comprising narratives collected in a nationwide writing collection on human–pet relations in Finland. The data used includes the authors’ memories of animal death in childhood. Theoretically, the study draws on recent studies about childhood and about human–animal relations, with a relational viewpoint that emphasizes emotions and embodiment.
The study suggests that there are special meanings involved in relations with animals in childhood, and these are epitomized in the experiences of animal death. The memories analyzed illustrate the position of animals as friends and family members already before pet keeping became a central part of home and family. Animal companions have been lost and killed, buried, and mourned, and their death is frequently contextualized in the experiences of growing up. In the childhood memories analyzed in this study, the human–animal boundary does not appear clear-cut, but instead, mourning the loss of an animal bears similarities to mourning the death of a human. However, grief for a dead animal has been culturally forbidden, which is seen in parents’ relative silence and the challenges faced in communicating the grief between parents and children.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Acampora, R. R. (2001). Real animals? An inquiry on behalf of relational zoöntology. Human Ecology Review, 8(2), 73–78.
Bauman, Z. (1992). Mortality, immortality and other life strategies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Charles, N. (2014). ‘Animals just love you as you are’: Experiencing kinship across the species barrier. Sociology, 48(4), 715–730.
Charles, N., & Davies, C. A. (2011). My family and other animals: Pets as kin. In B. Carter & N. Charles (Eds.), Human and other animals: Critical perspectives (pp. 69–92). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cunningham, H. (2013). The invention of childhood. London, England: BBC Books.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Howarth, G. (2007). The rebirth of death: Continuing relationships with the dead. In M. Mitchell (Ed.), Remember me: Constructing immortality – Beliefs on immortality, life, and death (pp. 19–34). London, England: Routledge.
Jones, O. (2003). ‘Endlessly revisited and forever gone’: On memory, reverie and emotional imagination in doing children’s geographies. An ‘addendum’ to ‘“to go back up the side hill”: Memories, imaginations and reveries of childhood’ by Chris Philo. Children’s Geographies, 1(1), 25–36.
Jones, O. (2008). ‘True geography [.] quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe’. Approaching the otherness of childhood. Children’s Geographies, 6(2), 195–212.
Kean, H. (2013). Human and animal space in historic ‘pet’ cemeteries in London, New York and Paris. In J. Johnston & F. Probyn-Rapsey (Eds.), Animal death (pp. 21–42). Sydney, Australia: University of Sydney Press.
Latvala, P., & Laurén, K. (2013). The sensitive interpretation of emotions: Methodological perspectives on studying meanings in oral history texts. In Frog, & P. Latvala (Eds.) with H. F. Leslie, Approaching methodology (pp. 249–266). Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.
Leach, E. (1964). Anthropological aspects of language: Animal categories and verbal abuse. In E. H. Lenneberg (Ed.), New directions in the study of language (pp. 23–63). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leinonen, R.-M. (2013). Palvelijasta terapeutiksi. Ihmisen ja hevosen suhteen muuttuvat kulttuuriset mallit Suomessa. Oulu, Finland: Oulun yliopisto.
Marvin, G. (2006). Wild killing: Contesting the animal in hunting. In The Animal Studies Group (Ed.), Killing animals (pp. 10–29). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Morrow, V. (1998). My animals and other family: Children’s perspectives on their relationships with companion animals. Anthrozoös, 11(4), 218–226.
Redmalm, D. (2015). Pet grief: When is nonhuman life grievable? The Sociological Review, 63(1), 19–35.
Russell, J. (2016). I remember everything: Children, companion animals, and a relational pedagogy of remembrance. In M. DeMello (Ed.), Mourning animals: Rituals and practices surrounding animal death (pp. 81–89). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2010). Reading autobiography. A guide for interpreting life narratives (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Taylor, C. (2013). Respect for the (animal) dead. In J. Johnston & F. Probyn-Rapsey (Eds.), Animal death (pp. 85–101). Sydney, Australia: University of Sydney Press.
Thomas, K. (1983). Man and the natural world. Changing attitudes in England 1500–1800. London, England: Allen Lane.
Tipper, B. (2011). ‘A dog who I knew quite well’: Everyday relationships between children and animals. Children’s Geographies, 9(2), 145–165.
Turner, J. H., & Stets, J. E. (2005). The sociology of emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wyness, M. (2012). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Schuurman, N. (2018). Experiences of Pet Death in Childhood Memories. In: Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Malone, K., Barratt Hacking, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature . Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_67-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_67-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education