A 10-year longitudinal study suggests that when seeking a confidante, many children are more likely to turn to their pets than to their siblings or other peers.
After working on a data set with Professor Claire Hughes of Cambridge, Matt Cassels was struck by the data on children’s relationships with pets and decided to focus his MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology on these relationships, according to gatescambridge.org.
“It had never occurred to me to consider looking at pet relationships although I had studied children’s other relationships for some time and even though my own experience of pets while I was growing up was so important,” Cassels said.
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