Abstract
The aim of this research is to exploratorily determine how keeping a dog alters family structures. From samples collected through questionnaire papers and on the internet, 313 dog-owning families were selected as the subject for this analysis. We performed a single-factor analysis of variance (single-factor ANOVA) with the three periods of time; "Before ownership", "Immediately after ownership", and "Present", as the independent variables, and the subscales of family structure; "cohesion" between the parents, the father and children, and the mother and children, and the bidirectional "power" in each relationship as the dependent variables. We found that there was an alteration in the family structure between the time period "before ownership" and the two time periods after ownership, with a noticeable difference in the father's power over children. We discuss the relationship between the act of keeping a dog and the structure of the family.
