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2 4 4 J. Archer further, with reports of owners eating the fleas off pet dingoes, and women |¥om several societies suckling the young of species kept as pets. D O M O D E R N C O N D I T I O N S A C C E N T U A T E A T T A C H M E N T T O P E T S . 9 Although I have argued against both the view that pet ownership is a compensation for a poor capacity for human relationships and that pet ownership is a product of western culture, it may nevertheless be the case that the social arrangements in mod- e m western societies accentuate the bonds people tbrm with pets. Family sizes tend to be small, owing to the demographic transition, and this has been exacerbated by a breakdown o f extended family living (and to some extent of the nuclear family itself). The trend for smaller household units has reached its logical conclusion with larger numbers o f people living alone. Is there evidence that these social arrange- ments foster closer attachment to pets? There are indications of greater attachment to pets among those with fewer close human ties, such as single and divorced people, when compared with families with children (Albert and Bulcroft 1987). Women living alone were found to be sig- nificantly more lonely than those with pets or those living with other people (Zasloff and Kidd 1994). A German study of single people with cats found that they played with them tbr longer than did cat owners with a close human relationship, and they were more strongly attached to their cats (Bergler and Loewy 1992). The distress following pet loss has been found to be greater for those living alone than for those sharing a household with others (Archer and Winchester 1994; Carmack 1985) and to be inversely related to family size (Gerwolls and Labott 1994). Therefore, although there is no evidence that people with deficient capacity for adult human relationships turn to pets as substitutes, those whose circumstances have led to them living alone or without children do seem to be more strongly at- tached to their pets. The living arrangements o f modern western societies contrast greatly with those in more traditional societies, for example, with life in Indian cities where there are extended family networks living together with relatively little space and privacy. These structural differences are associated with psychological differences, with what amounts to a different outlook on life. Laungani (1994) has described the differ- ences in terms of western society emphasizing individuality, rationality and control, free will, and materialism, whereas Indian society emphasizes communal values, emotional expression, determinism, and spiritualism (cf. the distinction between in- dividualistic and collectivist societies made by Triandis 1995). These differences affect a wide range of people's activities and beliefs. They lead us to ask whether pet own- ership may be accentuated in the affluent west today, because it is fulfilling emotional needs that at other times and in other places are directed primarily (but not exclusively) to an extended family network, including a larger number of infants and children. The cross-cultural and historical evidence (Serpell 1986, 1987) certainly indi- cates that pet ownership is prevalent even when extended family networks are