缺乏子女的家庭生命週期可分為：婚前期、新婚期、混亂期、空巢期及老年期五種類別。飼養寵物不但可以影響健康與生活品質，也緊密了人與人之間的關係，寵物更在家庭中扮演著子女的角色。本研究探討寵物與家庭的休閒關係，以家庭生命週期中無跟子女居住的時期為情境，以質性研究中的訪談法，自2007年1月至4月期間，訪問了1位男性與7位女性，訪談對象的條件為養狗一年以上現無跟子女同住，再以類屬與情境分析方法分析文本內容。研究發現：(1)寵物是媒介：作為潤滑或衝突飼主的人際關係，也包括休閒上的阻礙或是機會；(2)寵物是休閒關係的延伸：透過寵物可以瞭解夫妻的休閒互動與依賴關係；(3)寵物是自我意識的投射：寵物可以反射出飼主的期待需求；(4)寵物在家庭扮演的角色，會隨著不同的家庭生命週期而改變。寵物雖在各種週期中扮演子女的角色，但以混亂期的連結關係最為薄弱。

　　The major purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between pets owner and pets in the context of family and leisure. Especially, this study focused on those family situated in childless life cycles, including pre-marital phase, newlywed phase, parenting phase, empty-nested phase, and retirement phase. The qualitative in-depth interview, assisted with participant observation, has been employed as the key method for data collection. In this study, totally 8 interviewers, including 7 females and 1 male, were successfully acquired from January to April 2007. After analyzing the data by category and situation analysis, the role of pets within family context could be revealed in the following conclusion:(1)pet as mediator, which was able to conciliate and alienate pet-owner’s interpersonal relationship (2) pets as representative, which affected and re-define the meaning of leisure between couples(pets-owners), (3) Pets were able to reflected the process of self-awareness of pets-owner (4) The role of pets in family was altering according to different family life cycles. Although pets played children’s role in every family phases, but it had weak relation in parenting phases.