Emotional Bonds Between Humans and Companion Animals in Family Life: A Situated Study in Manizales (Colombia)

This study examined emotional bonds between humans and companion animals within the family context, drawing on a situated investigation conducted in the urban setting of Manizales (Colombia). Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, data were collected through 400 surveys and nine in-depth interviews. Quantitative analysis identified statistically significant associations between the intensity of the emotional bond and the animal’s symbolic representation, as well as with sociodemographic variables such as age and marital status, although the latter showed small effect sizes. Qualitative findings indicate that companion animals are integrated into everyday life as sources of emotional wellbeing and comfort, through practices of care, proximity, and emotional recognition. Grounded in the sociology of emotions, the study argues that these bonds do not stem from isolated individual choices but rather they take shape as social practices that organize affective experience within family life. In this framework, shared affective experience with companion animals emerges as an intense and socially meaningful relational bond, constructed through everyday dynamics of care, negotiation, and ambivalence, without instituting literal equivalences or displacing existing human bonds.