Pets Instead of
Children?
Reading the East Asian pet economy through Asia as Method
Why does “pets instead of children” sound so familiar?
And what does the phrase hide?
Three usual answers
- Humanisation — we treat pets as if they were people.
- Consumer culture — companies sell us “love”.
- Selfishness — young people simply do not want children.
Each answer describes something. None explains why the phrase is so common here, now.
Our argument
The phrase is not only Western-style “pet humanisation”, and not only a selfish choice. Read through Asia as Method, it is a way of negotiating family, gender and care under local pressures.
The pet market then packages that negotiation and sells it back to us.
We test the argument with policy data, company material and a survey — and we say clearly where it fails.
How we get there
Five steps, five speakers, twenty minutes.
Concepts first
Asia as Method, plus a lens on gender and care.
Then evidence
Japan and Hong Kong, with mainland China as a third point of reference.
Then a critique
What our reading explains — and what it cannot.
Concepts
A method for comparing Asian societies — and a lens on care.
SpeakerDING Yuewen
Asia as Method (Chen, 2010)
Change the reference point
Stop treating “the West” as the default yardstick for what a family, or a good life, should look like.
Inter-referencing
Compare Asian societies with each other, not only with the West. Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China become each other’s reference.
Transform the self
Use those comparisons to see our own society differently — including what we take for granted.
Honest note — Chen’s book is about knowledge production and deimperialisation. We borrow his idea of inter-referencing as a method for comparing pet discourse. That is our application, not his claim.
Two ways to read the same trend
The default story
- Pets are humanised.
- Consumer culture sells love.
- Individuals choose pets over family.
Asia as Method asks
- What local pressures shape family and work?
- How do nearby societies compare?
- Who carries the cost of the “choice”?
We are not saying the left-hand story is wrong. We are saying it cannot explain why this phrase is so common in East Asia now — and that is the question we owe an answer to.
Supporting lens: gender and care
Care is gendered
Care work is often coded as feminine, and expected of women.
Motherhood as expectation
Marriage and childbearing carry social pressure — and the pressure is unevenly distributed.
Other kinds of kinship
Care and family can take forms beyond the nuclear household.
Week 10 (Storey, feminism and gender) gives us the vocabulary. Two empirical studies give us the evidence we use later: a cross-national study of housework and fertility, and a Japanese study of pet parenting and sex roles.
Case and Data
Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China — and the numbers behind the phrase.
SpeakerLI Xiangxuan
Three East Asian sites
Two core cases, one comparison.
Japan
- 671,270 births in 2025 — a record low
- 13.29m children under 15 (Apr 2026)
- ≈15.67m pet dogs and cats (2025)
- ¥880bn pet care market (2025)
Hong Kong
- 31,100 births in 2025 — a record low
- 373,600 children aged 14 or below
- 240,000+ households keep 400,000+ cats and dogs
- Called an “enormous consumption market”
Mainland China
- 7.92m births in 2025
- 126m urban dogs and cats (2025)
- RMB 312.6bn urban pet spending
- Household penetration ≈17%
Why these three. Most sources are available in English or Chinese; all three had record-low births recently; their housing, welfare and pet markets differ enough to compare. The numbers are background — they do not prove that pets replace children.
More pets than children
Two records, one tempting headline.
671,270
births in 2025 — a record low
1.14
total fertility rate — also a record low
−350,000
fewer children than a year earlier
Japan’s pets now outnumber children under 15 by about 2.4 million. But “more pets” is correlation, not replacement — and sources count pets differently (registrations vs. survey estimates).
Baby firms turn to pets
The same factories, the same language, a new consumer.
17%
of Unicharm’s 2025 sales come from pet care (target: 20% by 2030)
2022
Lucky Industries — baby carriers since 1934 — launches dog carriers
¥880bn
pet care market in 2025 (¥689.6bn in 2020)
“In Japan, dogs are seen as babies, as part of the family.”
— CEO, Lucky Industries
So what. The baby-care industry does not disappear — it retools. The language of family travels with the machinery.
Pricing love against a child
“More families are opting for pets instead of having children.”
— OneDegree press release, March 2024
HK$6m
cited cost of raising a child
HK$680k
highest cited cost of keeping a pet
526
cat and dog owners surveyed by Ipsos
So what. The market speaks to owners as parents — and prices love against the cost of a child. But this is a company press release: commissioned by an insurer, with early adopters of pet insurance. It is material, not proof.
Why not have children?
What people name when they explain the decision.
447
people surveyed, Jun–Aug 2025, by a trade union
30%+
of surveyed mothers moved to full-time homemaking or part-time work
3 in 4
aged 46 or below had ruled out parenthood — for now
A small survey by a union: an example, not proof.
Analysis and Limits
Who speaks, what is sold, and what our reading cannot explain.
SpeakersTIAN Jiayi · LIANG Qiaoyao
Who speaks, and how
Same family language — different speakers.
| Question | Japan | Hong Kong |
|---|---|---|
| Who speaks? | Baby-goods makers: Lucky, Unicharm, AirBuggy | An insurer — and the government |
| What frame? | Pets as babies and family | Pets instead of children; “pet parenting” |
| What is sold? | Carriers, strollers, pet diapers | Insurance; lifetime care costs; a “consumption market” |
Mainland comparison: trade media call pets-as-children the “next mother-and-baby track” (our translation), and the white paper now counts pet funerals, photography and insurance. Same language, more speakers.
Care without the package?
Read the chain with “may”, not “proves”.
01 · Pressure
Work and housing
Housing, money and time dominate the decision.
02 · Expectation
Marriage and childbearing
The expectation falls unevenly — mostly on women.
03 · Practice
Pets offer care and kinship
Daily care, closeness, a relationship that can be chosen.
04 · Market
Sells child-like care
The ready-made version of kinship, priced per month.
Evidence and honesty. The Hong Kong survey gives the pressure; a four-society study links low fertility to women’s housework burden; a Japanese study finds pet-keeping can follow parenting sex roles. We have no male/female data of our own — so this remains a hypothesis.
What this reading can and cannot do
What it explains
- How firms and the state borrow family language.
- How gender and care enter the story.
- Why the phrase feels obvious rather than argued.
What it cannot explain
- “More pets than children” is not proof of replacement.
- Pets also play partner or only-child playmate roles.
- In Hong Kong, 62–63% of surveyed pets were adopted or came from friends.
- Pet parenting appears in other urban, low-fertility societies too.
A reading, not a verdict — the data are examples, and most of our sources show the company side.
Three things to take away
01
Change the frame
Compare Asian sites with each other, not only with the West.
02
Care under pressure
“Pet as child” can signal a negotiation of family, gender and care.
03
The market packages it
Firms — and sometimes the state — turn family language into products.
And the limits stay with us: correlation is not replacement, and the speaking side we can document best is the company side.
Two questions for you
Q1
Choice — or pressure?
Is “pets instead of children” a free choice, or a response to pressures that fall unevenly?
Q2
Does “Asia” help, or flatten?
Does reading this through Asia help us see more — or does it risk treating Asia as one stereotype?
Talk to the person next to you for one minute. We will take three or four answers.
Sources (1/2)
A = official / academic · B = media · C = company or industry report.
[1] Statistics Bureau of Japan (2026). Statistics Topics No.148: number of children. stat.go.jp
[2] MHLW Japan (2026). 2025 vital statistics (final): births, fertility rate. mhlw.go.jp
[3] Pet Food Industry (2025). JPFA 2025 national dog and cat survey. link
[4] Qazinform (2026). JPFA 2025 survey and children’s population. link
[5] Al Jazeera (2026). Japan’s pet care industry booms as “fur babies” outnumber infants. link
[6] SCMP (2026). Record low 31,100 births in Hong Kong in 2025. link
[7] SCMP (2026). Hong Kong births fall below 30,000 (provisional). link
[8] China Daily HK (2025). HKFTU survey: housing and child-rearing costs deter families. link
[9] RTHK (2025). Policy Address 2025: pet-friendly measures. link
[10] HKSAR Government (2025). Policy Address 2025. link
[11] OneDegree HK (2024). Hong Kong pet spending survey (Ipsos). link
[12] Asia News Network (2025). Dog-friendly dining in Hong Kong. link
[13] HK01 (2026). Mainland births 7.92 million in 2025. link
[14] zizzs (2026). NBS 2025 population summary. link
Sources (2/2)
Accessed 7 November 2026. Items marked “secondary” should be checked against the original.
[15] China.com (2026). 2026 China Pet Industry White Paper figures. link
[16] Petdata (2025). China Pet Industry White Paper (PDF). link
[17] CBNData (2026). Pets as children: the “next mother-and-baby track”. link
[18] CBNData (2026). White paper counts pet funerals, photos, insurance. link
[19] Duke University Press (2010). Chen Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method. link
[20] Diversity Reading List. Summary of Asia as Method, ch.5 (secondary). link
[21] Volsche et al. (2023). Pet parenting and sex in a Japanese sample. Anthrozoös 36(3). link
[22] (2024). Pet parenting: a systematic review. J. Veterinary Behavior 76. link
[23] (2017). Domestic division of labour and fertility preference, China / Japan / Korea / Taiwan. Demographic Research 36(18). link
[24] Lingnan University (2026). Social media discourse on childbirth. link
[25] DIJ Tokyo. Holthus: The Sociology of Pets in Contemporary Japan. link
[26] iResearch / MobTech (2023). China pet household penetration (PDF). link
[27] China Daily HK (2026). Op-ed: pet policy and public housing. link
Thank you.
Questions, disagreements and counter-examples are all welcome.