1233 - Keeping pets is good for children

Some people think that keeping pets is good for children while others think it is dangerous and unhealthy for them.

Which viewpoint do you agree with?

Model Answer 1: [View: Keeping pets is good for children]

Some individuals support keeping pets around young children as they think it is beneficial while others oppose the idea citing pet-related injuries and fatalities in recent times. In this essay, I shall argue that dangers that stem from young children having pets are overemphasised, sometimes even exaggerated, and children receive substantive psychological benefits from having pets.

To commence with, most parents allow common and friendly pets like cats, dogs and birds as their children’s companions and the number of strange pets like snakes, spiders, apes, etc. are very rare. Such unfamiliar pets, which are a bit wild in nature, have been reported to hurt some children. However, such incidents are so rare that they are negligible because the overwhelming majority of children have non-lethal pets like cats, dogs, fish, rodents and rabbits. For instance, recent statistical data reveals that 93% of children own non-lethal and friendly pets that have almost zero per cent chance of harming or hurting children. So, I believe that pets are not a physical danger to children.

To shed some light on the positivity of letting children have pets, I can think of many. However, the most important of them is the favourable effects it has on children’s psychology and growth. Young pet owners frequently empathise with their pets and perform a diverse range of activities to maintain their well-being. The Cambridge Developmental Psychology Unit found that children who had grown up with pets were 30% less likely to bully others and show aggression. Pets are also conducive to young children’s mental growth, and they get involved in interesting activities with their pets that help them realise empathy more deeply. So it is undeniable that a child’s prosociality and mental health can be improved through exposure to pets.

In conclusion, letting young children possess and interact with friendly pets has important benefits. It is not a threat to children, but rather beneficial to nurture some important good qualities in them. So, it is expected that parents who wish to have pets for their children would consider those benefits and finally select one of the friendly pets for their children.

Model Answer 2: [View: Keeping pets is good for children]

While some people prefer to keep their children at a distance from pets because of health and safety reasons, others choose to do just the opposite. In this essay, I would like to argue that pets are actually good for the overall well-being of children for some obvious reasons.

The first reason, of course, is that pets provide the children with comfort and company, especially when nobody else is accompanying them. But, even when somebody is accompanying them, children still feel a sense of comfort in the company of their pets, mainly because those pets are usually more “passive” and “loyal” than other humans. And that is exactly probably why, as some researchers have found, a very significant percentage of parents allow their youngsters to have pets.

Pets also help young children with learning. In fact, we often can see the children, who otherwise do not like to read, lying on their beds and reading to their dogs or cats and showing them pictures. The juniors even ask questions to their pets to see if they - the pets, are actually paying enough attention to the readings. In other words, the little ones actually learn important and fun things in a pleasant environment while petting their cats and dogs. Besides, researchers have also monitored that the stress level of the kids goes significantly down when they are with their pets.

Finally, some researchers have also found that having pets can reduce a child’s risk of developing certain common allergies. Such research showed that children, who had animals, had fewer positive skin tests for indoor allergens - like a pet and dust-mite allergen, and also outdoor allergens such as ragweed and grass, compared to those juniors who did not live with pets.

So, based on these findings, it can easily be argued that pets actually help children’s development, rather than harming them.

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