Selective Kinship: Family Socialization of Species Boundaries in Multispecies U.S. Households

• In Event: Entangled Species: Animals in Society Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Families are central sites where children learn how to interpret and morally categorize nonhuman animals. While sociological research has extensively examined speciesism at macro levels—across food systems, institutions, and media—we know far less about how species hierarchies are reproduced, negotiated, or unsettled through the everyday practices of parenting. This study analyzes how parents of young children socialize species boundaries in multispecies U.S. households. Drawing on a larger qualitative project with 28 families, we present two narrative case studies—Paige and Katy—selected for their analytically rich, contrasting accounts of how adults frame, justify, and emotionally scaffold children’s encounters with nonhuman animals. Across cases, parents engaged in four recurring processes: (1) distributing moral attention unevenly across pets, food animals, and wildlife; (2) shifting moral “goalposts” depending on context, developmental readiness, and household routine; (3) managing cognitive dissonance through selective omission, reframing, and emotional buffering; and (4) experiencing fleeting moments of ecological embeddedness in which interdependence briefly displaced species boundaries before routine practices reasserted them. Our findings extend scholarship on family practices and boundary work by revealing how species categories are reproduced through what parents explain, omit, ritualize, or allow children to witness. Understanding families as multispecies sites of moral socialization illuminates how speciesism is sustained yet also intermittently unsettled in everyday life, offering insight into the possibilities for cultivating care and reciprocity across species lines.

Authors

• Yana Kuchirko, CUNY-Brooklyn College

• Antonella Guadagnino, CUNY Graduate Center