I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I just saw a disturbing statistic. America now has more dogs than children. MORE DOGS THAN CHILDREN! DOGS!!!
90 million dogs. 73 million children under 18. (Plus 73 million cats.)
P.D. James wrote a sci-fi novel, The Children of Men, that forecast a future in which mass infertility drove depressed, aging adults to substitute dolls and pets for babies. He wrote it in 2006 and set it in 2021 England.
In 2025 America, the problem isn’t infertility (although some signs point in that direction), but choice: people seem increasingly to choose dogs over babies. (Cats are also booming, but less than dogs. Cats are holding even with babies at 73 million. Still, that is one cat for every child…)
The implications for society are troubling. Japan, with the world’s worst “birth dearth”, has for some time had as many pets as children (but they count birds and fish as pets.) Many other advanced industrial nations (Italy, Ireland, South Korea, China) are suffering comparable declining birth rates, though I don’t have any dog-cat numbers for them.
I found myself wondering: who counts dogs and cats? Turns out it is the AVMA, the American Veterinary Medical Association. I suspect it may be a survey of vets, and so be an undercount. I mean, who counts the unvetted, unhoused feral cats and stray dogs?
Anyway, I thought you’d like to know.
O Ben Finiti 