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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

Book Review: Just Like Family: How Companion Animals 
Joined the Household by Andrea Laurent-Simpson 

Alicia Justice Melich 
Department of Anthropology 

California State University, Los Angeles 
 
In the present day, more people are choosing to be childfree, or 
have children later in life, and marrying at older ages. The concept 
and definition of family are changing and reflecting these 
demographics. The nuclear heteronormative couple with two 
children is no longer the first image that comes to mind when a 
person thinks of the word family. Andrea Laurent-Simpson, a 
Research Assistant Professor and Senior Lecturer in the 
Department of Sociology at Southern Methodist University, offers 
an insightful approach to the “multispecies” family in America in 
her book Just Like Family: How Companion Animals Joined the 
Household. Her educational background includes a PhD in 
Sociology from Texas Woman’s University, and her research focus 
is based on family and fertility, non-human animal interaction, and 
identity theory. Laurent-Simpson’s main purpose and goal of this 
book is to “explain why the presence of the multispecies family is 
an important domain of research, particularly for family scholars. 
. . and to demonstrate how the multispecies family has developed 
in the context of increasing diversification of familial structures 
within the United States” (2021:23). She offers a sociological lens 
of the development of this new family form by analyzing her 
original data. This data includes 35 in-depth interviews with 
people who own dogs, cats, or both, from different types of family 
structures in the US, including families with children and families 
without (by choice or by circumstance), veterinary visit 
observations, pet advertisement analysis, and the author’s 
personal narratives. 

The purpose of this review is to highlight sociological 
literature on non-human actors and their social importance and 
relevance in not only the discipline of sociology but also to 
highlight a post-humanistic and non-human-centered approach to 
the subject of non-human social actors. The introduction to her 
book is a simple yet impactful one; this book is about family, a 
“multispecies” family. In Chapter 1, she analyzes how different 



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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

historical macro-level devices have driven the multispecies family 
to appear. Laurent-Simpson also reviews the literature on the 
socio-historical impact of “postmodernity” and how it reflects in 
recognizing animals as sentient beings. She argues that we cannot 
fully understand the multispecies family as a new family type 
without looking at the influence of the Industrial Revolution and 
the changing family structure in the United States. Identity theory 
is used in Chapter 2 to observe how traditional family identities 
form within families without children. She also highlights the 
expectations of the role of the “parent” in American culture. She 
shows how her participants are parenting their pets as children, 
which results in the changing definition of family and who can 
take ownership of the said family label. In Chapter 3, she shows 
how childless and childfree participants talk about the role of 
“parent” to a non-human participant and how that role is affirmed 
by their loved ones and close family members. Chapter 4 is 
supported by a literature analysis examining the identities 
assigned to pets when human children are part of the home. She 
explores the emotional fulfillment and the identity formation that 
occurs from being a pet parent and how this role affects behaviors 
and lifestyle choices. In Chapter 5, Laurent-Simpson analyzes 
macro-level evidence in pet product ads to connect the 
multispecies family dynamic as being reproduced and cemented 
in mainstream American Culture. She highlights how the mass 
entity of advertisements has embraced the new multispecies 
family as a unique and distinct structure with different needs than 
the single-species family. She uses her analysis of advertisements 
that include pets as her evidence of this. Lastly, in her conclusion, 
she states there is a gap in the scholarly literature about the 
multispecies family and calls for scholars to look at the impact of 
multispecies relations on identity and family structure in the 
United States.  

The exploration, thoughtfulness, and rich analysis of the 
multispecies family given by Laurent-Simpson provides a clear 
and relevant piece of literature supported by sociological theories, 
data, and personal anecdotes. The book achieves the author’s 
goals of demonstrating the importance of researching the 
multispecies family without being pretentious or overly academic. 
Her writing is accessible to a multitude of readers. It provides an 



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CALIFORNIA SOCIOLOGY FORUM VOL. 7 

abundance of qualitative data and theoretical sociological support 
from several authors to cement her own analysis. It is a relevant 
book to the changing of traditional family structure. Although 
impactful and meaningful, this book could benefit from a deeper 
look at the ethical repercussions of “pet ownership,” the actual 
acquirement of the pet, and what the commodification of family 
pets implicates.  

This book provides an opportunity for the sociological 
field to broaden the definition of family and look to include non-
human participants in more research. It takes a nuanced approach 
to the reaction of capitalistic fatigue and offers a liminal reaction 
to liberating the traditional, white-dominated notions of family. 
This book is meant for anyone who has a pet, any animal lover, or 
any person who recognizes that a family takes many forms and 
knows there is no limit on love and what a family can look like. It 
is a validating, informative love letter to anyone who has ever 
loved an animal. This book provides a practical application to 
expand the definition of family to include nonhuman participants. 
In final thoughts, I found this book to be affirming to pet lovers, 
clear and informative, and provides an abundance of sociological 
evidence. This book can provide a foundation to more scholarly 
works about the multispecies family and the possibilities for 
growth are endless.  

 
REFERENCES 

Laurent-Simpson, Andrea. 2021. Just Like Family: How Companion 
Animals Joined the Household. NYU Press. 

 


	Book Review: Just Like Family: How Companion Animals Joined the Household by Andrea Laurent-Simpson - Alicia Justice Melich



