I got told today I shouldn't raise kids because I'd purposefully raise them in a vegan household, without animal products of any sort. I was told this would be dangerous and unfair to the kids.
It was a weirdly direct thing for this person to say to me (one of my coworkers). It's stuck in my head. I was told I should let my potential children choose what sort of morals they have, even though this person is raising their kids Catholic. Their advice to me was to allow my potential kids to choose every night between a meat-based meal and a vegan meal (???). And several other coworkers agreed. Where do they come up with this? No carnist raises their kids like this.
So is anyone raising vegan kids or does anyone know about what it's like? Or was anyone here raised in a vegan household?
If your kid is healthy, I don't think you're obligated to feed them meat.
Now, if your kid is going out of his/her way to eat meet at school or whatever and tells you they want meat at home, you can have that conversation.
But if we're just talking about a kid's taste, what if you make casserole every night and the kid is tired of casserole? Is it child abuse to keep feeding them the casserole?
It's probably abuse to feed a kid the same thing over and over, yeah. But there's a variety of vegan food I could feed potential kids. I'm vegan and I don't eat the same thing every night.
If my kid were sneaking away to eat meat or buy leather or something I'd try talking it over, yeah. Because I earnestly believe in veganism. I don't think it would result in me giving a kid meat though. I'd probably tell them if they can't help themselves, just don't do it around me or tell me about it.
If at a certain point I'm unable to influence my kid beyond talking it over with them I doubt I'd do anything further though. And after the kid's an adult there's nothing I'd could do.
Sorry, I must have worded this wrong because someone else here interpreted me saying vegan food is boring. That's not what I mean.
I'm wondering if it's abusive to disallow food that a kid likes to eat. In this case, it's meat. Now, no kid NEEDS meat. It's just a preference, so there's no health issue.
And it's not a loaded question. I genuinely don't really know.
I don't think it's necessarily abuse to guide what a kid eats. They can't have Doritos for every meal, even if that's what they want. I don't want to have a household that participates in the animal industry, so I'd hope a kid would understand that.
Also it seems like kids raised vegan might end up with a distaste for meat anyway
do you mean like vegan food is all the same casserole night after night? that's a bizarre analogy. you can make all kinds of vegan food.
No, I'm asking in general if not taking a child's culinary tastes into consideration is abusive behavior.
It works without talking about carnism/veganism. Like, if the kid really likes artichoke and eats it outside of the house, but the parents never have artichoke at the house and refuse to give it to him/her for whatever reason.
It's not a binary question. You definitely shouldn't feed a child or any dependent the exact same thing every night. That amounts to torture eventually. Especially if they don't like it in the first place.
You can also vary the preparation process to make an "unacceptable" food edible for the kid. Kid doesn't like steamed broccoli? Put some cheese (or vegan cheese, don't @ me) on that shit or put it in a cream sauce. Vary the steaming time. Maybe they prefer softer broccoli or somewhar crunchy broccoli. Maybe adding salt, butter, vegan margarine, vegan butter, or other spices could help. Or maybe green beans are more to their liking.
Some preparation methods are simply disgusting (overcooked mushy boiled spinach instead of blanched) and the parent either doesn't know or doesn't care that there are better ways to prepare it. I don't know if I'd call that "abuse" but it's certainly unfortunate, and my parents went through things like that that they still to this day remember with revulsion and pain.
My dad was forced to eat mushy boiled canned spinach and he had to sit at the table literally as long as it took to eat it. He still had to eat it even if it got cold, and no, they wouldn't reheat it. This happened multiple times. I'd categorize that as abuse.
@RedQuestionAsker2@hexbear.net
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are literally infinite options of how to prepare food, so surely there is SOME WAY to get a child the right nutrition without traumatizing them, even for those children with "ordinary" food aversion and food aversion disorders.
As for your other question of is it abuse to NOT feed a child meat? I don't think it is, but it kind of depends on the kid, doesn't it? There are kids that would be traumatized by regularly eating meat, then finding out the meat is actually cute petting zoo animals. There are kids that have intense curiosity to try everything. I think dogmatic moral stances should be bent a bit sometimes.
Getting our kid to eat vegetables became easier when we let them control their own use of salt and butter. That added a sense of control, allowed them to season to taste and also has allowed some fuckups so now they know that there is in fact too much of a good thing.
Awesome! I'm glad that was a success.