WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Dear Economist,
I’ve been dating someone for a few months and the relationship is now quite serious. There’s just one problem: his dog. I’ve no strong feelings about dogs, but he’s had this mutt for years and seems to love it more than he loves me. I could swallow my reservations and see where the relationship goes, or I could opt for the old “either the dog goes or I do” ultimatum. What should I do?
Yours, Canophobic in Kettering
Dear Canophobic,
The news isn’t good. The evidence – gathered from 20 years of data by the economists Peter Schwarz, Jennifer Troyer and Jennifer Beck Walker – suggests that the pooch may indeed dog your relationship.
Your letter does not mention whether you want to have children, but if you do, the dog is a problem. Households with young children tend not to own dogs – suggesting that the dog is a good substitute for a baby. Or to flip it around, households with dogs tend not to have young children.
If you get over that hump, when the kids are older your family is more likely to want a dog. By then, though, this one will probably have breathed his last. So it’s not just this dog, but dogs from here to eternity.
Worse yet, the figures show that when households earn more money the women tend to want to spend it on the children and the men tend to spend it on pets. (Think of the dog as a super-toy, like a motorbike or a fancy piece of hi-fi.) Only poverty, it seems, can save you from bitter arguments over how to spend money.
So, by all means, tell him it’s you or the dog. But please don’t expect to get the answer you hope for.
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