A post on the Science Codex caught my attention (You think of your dog as one of your children? You probably live in the city).

Of course, my first reaction was that this guy clearly lived in the city to have such an opinion.  However on closer reading I realized that I had absolutely no idea what kind of research this represented beyond examining the obvious.

...who found that people who think of animals as children tend to have a city background.

As someone who lives in a more rural area I can attest to the fact that this simply isn't true for a wide range of people.  While there are certainly a greater number of animals in most families than in the city, I suspect the distribution between those that think they're special and those that don't doesn't appreciably differ.  After all, cities have more than their fair share of abuse and other issues with animals which suggests that plenty of "city people" don't think of animals as anything special.

"To think of pets as just another animal is not uncommon in rural areas," Blouin said, "which makes sense given the utilitarian relationships people in rural areas are more likely to have with a range of different animals -- from farm to wild animals."

It's rural.  It's not the middle of the Amazon jungle.  What "utilitarian" nature?  While I'm sure that many people in rural areas have utilitarian purposes for their animals, there are an equal number that don't.  In fact, I think a strong argument can be made that the more utilitarian an animal is, the more important it becomes to the family.  A herding animal, or a working animal represents a real asset, and you can bet that it will be cared for accordingly.

"People who think of their pets as their children often re-evaluate this thought when they have human children of their own."

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.  If we're talking about infants, it's clearly different than teenagers.  In most cases, a pet in the house with children will become even more integrated into the family if it is a favorite of the children.

If the whole point was merely that people's priorities may shift when they have children ... well ... thanks, but we already knew that.