ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of pets in children's development by focusing on a pet care activity in a Japanese household involving a mother, two children, and their pet hamster. It shows how a Japanese mother uses verbal and nonverbal language in instructing the children how to care for the pet, including touching, holding, and feeding her, and to interpret the pet's embodied behavior in relation to her feelings, wants, and desires. Language socialization occurs within relationships characterized by power and inequality. The chapter discusses ways in which the mother's acts of instruction and socialization imbue the pet with subjectivity. It suggests that when children engage in pet care activities that involve attention to pets as subjective beings with wants, feelings, and desires, pets function as vehicles for promoting children's emotional, moral, and relational development. The chapter examines two acts of instruction and socialization that are observed in interactions with both animals and pre-verbal children: prompting and quoting speech.
