RAISING FAMILIES AND PETS TOGETHER...

 Do kids and pets mix? Most people take this question to mean whether or not kids are old enough to care for pets responsibly and handle them safely, or whether the pets can be trusted not to bite or scratch the children. Others, however, have noticed that the question nuzzles an age-old principle that could groom benefits for both families and the pets who live with them: Animals and people seem to be made for each other — and removing pets from the family mix may in fact be snipping children's normally empathetic heartstrings.

Historical ties between animals and humans living together as a unit are clear. "The fact that wolves stopped stalking us and we took them into our caves proved to be a miraculous leap of faith that changed our world forever," writes Meg Daley Olmert in her new book, Made for Each Other. Olmert draws on behavioral psychology, neuroscience and anthropology to examine how the human-animal bond developed in the first place, and then questions what might happen when those ties are unnaturally severed. The results look something like what psychiatrist Aaron Katcher calls "the fallout from this sudden interspecies divorce every day in children who are too wild to participate in polite society."