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?
I would absolutely get myself dragged into the HR office for this but tbh I would seriously consider talking to this coworker and saying something like:
"You know, I was thinking about what you said about how I shouldn't raise kids because I would raise them vegan and you're right about that. It wouldn't be fair to the kids.
By the way it made me realise that you shouldn't be raising kids because you are purposefully raising them Catholic, to the exclusion of all other religions, and that is unfair and unhealthy for your children.
What you really need to do is to take your kids to Sunday mass one weekend, then to an ashram the next weekend, then to a gurdwara and a mosque and a synagogue and a mashrik al adhar... oh, and don't forget to teach them all about Lutheranism too - it's really important that you offer your children the opportunity to understand all of the reasons why Martin Luther believed that the Catholic church was detestable and a perversion of the Christian faith.
Let your kids pick which religion they want to follow. That would be the right thing to do.
If I want dietary advice for raising children, I'll go to a pediatrician. If I want moral instruction for raising my children, I will go to people who practice what they preach.
And if you want to feel better about what diet I choose for my own children then maybe I'll speak some words of incantation over the vegan meals I prepare for them and I'll convince the kids that this magically transforms the dish into meat.
Anyway, I appreciate these little heart-to-heart moments we can share together about raising children and how comfortable you are with me that we can be open about this. Let me know if you want to do it more often."
I would get myself sacked for saying this kinda shit...
Don't do it.
I mean that's still better than what I'd want to say, which is I'll raise my kids as Satanists
our household is all vegan. my partner went vegan as a teen. they were patient with me as I eventually drifted away from animal products and went vegan when our child was small. our child was raised vegetarian from day 1 but never really took to eggs and cheese in the first place. they're 99% vegan now, except for the odd halloween candy. we've been clear about where animal products come from without watching dominion/earthlings.
these days dairy and eggs but meat especially elicit an 'ew' reaction. there's one other kid we know that is mostly if not entirely vegan. there's a vegetarian out there or two. while lots of people including families we know eat vegan meals without pitching a fit, I don't know of any other vegan households. the vast majority of other kids are carnists and my child has described that as 'weird'. it hasn't been a big point of contention with friends or internal anxiety so far, thankfully. our kid knows it's a choice and that if they fuck up and eat animals by accident that's nothing to be ashamed of, but they also know that we'd be disappointed if they choose to stop being vegan.
all this 'omg kids are vegan' shit is a bullshit dodge, just another type of carnist brainworms and deflection from people's own discomfort with self criticism and personal moral reckoning. veganism isn't hard to explain to kids. it's a pretty clear narrative - so many kids books are about animals and nature as friends that deserve life and respect. not eating them is less confusing. the fucked up part is explaining how the vast majority of people don't give a single flying shit. I try not to be too hard on the issue when it comes to other people, partly out of some kindness to my past self, partly because I don't think it's fair to instill distrust of 98% of people in a child just because they aren't vegan.
diet-wise obviously it's fine for kids to be vegan. it's as healthy for kids as you make it. there are all kinds of vegan garbage food to eat as well as lots of healthy stuff. our kid is a picky eater but I bet that's true irrespective of carnist or vegan. salt and sugar and carbs transcend all diets. it sucks that processed vegan foods aren't subsidized the same way that dairy and meat are because it's harder to get kids into lentils than plant hot dogs and plant mcnuggets but it's not a big deal.
thanks, this does kind of reassure me. My guess was that kids raised into vegan households would come to acclimate to it and understand the point of it. Kids aren't stupid and they can be taught things about the world.
Like you said, kids can absolutely understand veganism. Probably better than most adults because kids haven't had decades of mental gymnastics established in their brains to justify being a carnist. Kids can be taught respect and consideration for the world and it's fine.
Thanks for being kind to your kids and I hope your family stays healthy and happy
thank you! we're lucky to be in a community that is pretty accepting even if veganism is rare. we don't proselytize except having people over for meals and barring meat/dairy from our table. my partner and I are both decent cooks so that helps
we've had a few funny experiences with other carnist kids. one insisted he never ate vegetables while eating a cupcake we made. after we told him it was made only with plants, he was pretty sheepish. still ate it though. one or two times other kids have tried to push our buttons but after years of posting on the internet, owning children with facts and logic is pretty straightforward. 'no, we just choose not to eat animals. we like animals better alive and happy.' kids will ruminate on that more often than adults, they're naturally more open to learn, less ready to be defensive.
I wish you all the best if you choose to have kids. well also if you don't, but you know what I mean
Millions, if not billions of people and families around the world have vegetarian or vegan diets because that's their food heritage, and because access to animal products is rare where they live. Children grow up eating that food because that's what it is: food. No questioning about alternatives or dual-meals (Wtf).
It's rather colonialist and eurocentric to assume that raising a kid vegan/vegetarian is somehow an innovation or something out of the norm, when it's not the case for most of human history and population.
Vegan diets are pretty unusual, though you're certainly right about deprivation-based vegetarianism and near-vegetarianism.
I have a young child that we are raising vegan. It’s been straightforward enough so far, although she is still little so we haven’t had to deal with other people feeding her yet. Diet-wise it’s fine, usual suspects like b12 obv and pregnancy and breastfeeding has higher micronutrient needs, but that’s not specific to veganism.
Main issue is the social aspect, thankfully our families have been supportive but kids tend to bring up a lot of underlying sentiments and emotions, and managing that could be tricky especially once our kid is a bit older.
The other minor thing is allergies. Research seems to point to introducing allergens early in life to reduce allergies forming. Seeing as she will be growing up in a world where exposure to milk, eggs fish etc is pretty common we’d like to reduce the likelihood of her having severe reactions to these, but obviously that means we would have to feed her animal products :/
Your coworkers are severely lacking in perspective. There are hundreds of millions of kids being raised
veganvegetarian in India right now. It's fine.Lol ask them if they would raise their own kids with the meat or vegan option every night for dinner. Bet they fucking say no.
And regarding morals, every fucking family in the world raises their kids based on their own personal morals.
Your co-worker is an ass.
their criticisms of raising a vegan kid more put into perspective how the social aspect of that would be. I realized people would consider me abusive for having a vegan family. I think that's nonsense but it would be difficult to navigate accusations like that. Plus I started to get anxious about if my child would potentially get bullied.
if your kid is otherwise vegan, suddenly eating meat out of nowhere at their friends house even once is actually a big deal since the gut bacteria can’t handle it if they aren’t gradually attuned to it, so a freak out is warranted
I just appreciated that your coworker is catholic. That means they definitely gave a catholic guilt button. A lot of antivegan attitude, dressed up as social concern like this or otherwise, is just an expression of people's own guilt about the contradiction between what they know about what they eat and their self image as a Good Person. If you shift the terrain of the discussion away from peer pressure etc and onto more solid ground (I want to raise my child with strong morals, veganism is a strong part of my morals, cruelty to animals is clearly immoral) then you're either going to reach this person or get them to shut the fuck up. This criticism of you is clearly a reflection of their own insecurity, so the more you can turn this around on them the better.
but it would be difficult to navigate accusations like that.
Go for broke, start telling their kids whenever they eat meat an animal is killed for that
I live in an area where by the time a kid is 8 years old, they've probably already shot and eaten an animal at least once. So I don't know how well that would work.
Killing an animal with one's bare hands is considered a normal aspect of life here
read them vegancirclejerk every night and your child will get bullying superpowers. If this person is raising their kids Catholic aren't they also making meatless meals on Friday?
There's no moral argument to raise kids with omni Western pattern diet instead of any other diet, it just has to be healthy and tasty. You can't practically prevent them from eating animals outside the home, but you can make it clear to them why they shouldn't and that you'll be disappointed if they do, like how you'll tell them not to do drugs or steal cars.
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
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?
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.
The dual food options idea is from some kinda' class strata I'm totally not a part of because I don't think the ruralites I'm around would even say something so stupid. The logistics don't even make sense. Are you supposed to just buy and throw out extra food/meat just in case they want to not eat vegan at some point?
Are these suburbanites who pack their kids' lunches until they're like 17?
Honestly the idea just seems to be raising a kid as a vegan is immoral somehow. They think it's too heavy of a decision to impose upon a child and there needs to be contingencies in place just in case the kid would prefer to be "normal." That's the entire impulse of what's being proposed to me, that veganism must only be a completely rational decision made by an adult, not something to teach to children.
Which is really rich coming from people who are carnists. My father raised me to shoot and skin deer and I was presented with no choice in that.
There's also an impulse among carnists to believe veganism is an overly strict set of limitations, rather than seeing veganism as liberatory (which it is.) So they only see a child in a vegan family as punished, or restricted somehow
better also teach them to smoke and drink as children just so they are totally normal right out of the gate
Or was anyone here raised in a vegan household?
I wasn't, but I practically ate vegetarian anyways (with the exceptions of ultra-processed foods that happen to have animal ingredients) just because I was picky. Turns out I was willing to not eat a lot longer than my parents were willing to let me go without eating. So ultimately, I did have my own food separate from everyone else, but it wasn't like they prepared multiple options with the expectation have throwing away half. Can't believe someone would seriously suggest that.
Wow, I was the exact opposite as a kid. Basically didn't want to eat anything but meat and sometimes grains.
Never stopped being picky, really, even as a vegan. My diet is 90% carbohydrates lmao
That person is just bullshitting you and doing the normal sort of do-gooder derogation nonsense. I would encourage calling your coworker out if they ever try to do the liberal "having values is evil" thing to you again.
I do not have experience with this but I've talked with people and I think the biggest issue isn't what you do at home or even what they do at school, but getting family to understand you don't want them to feed your child animal products when your not around. It's not funny to sneak them a nugget. But I guess that also depends on your relationship with family and how much they respect you.
this is a great point. my partner's family was used to veganism but mine wasn't. getting them used to staunch veganism with us adults meant a lot less bullshit when it carried over to our kid too. it would be so fucking frustrating if I had family sandbagging me like that with my kid
I'm pretty much cut off from my potential family due to my politics and gender, so that's not much of an issue. And I'd probably only have a vegan partner if I were to have kids, so this kind of solves itself I hope.
I'd be really worried about the kid's classmates and peers though. I'd hate a kid to get bullied over coming from a vegan household, or get peer pressured into getting some nuggets at the lunch counter. That would suck and I don't know how to mitigate that.
I’d be really worried about the kid’s classmates and peers though. I’d hate a kid to get bullied over coming from a vegan household, or get peer pressured into getting some nuggets at the lunch counter. That would suck and I don’t know how to mitigate that.
Not really sure how much you can? I know my mom worried about us having gay parents and being bullied for that because Texas. She tried to encourage us to keep quiet, but we didn't think anything of it, so obviously we didn't hide it. AFAIK, none of us were ever bullied for it. At worst, one of my brother's friends parents just complained to our mom that we got special treatment because she couldn't accept her kids were not academically inclined. Oh, I guess my mom did get me to start taking karate when I was like 4yo. Not that I ever got into any fights at school, but I assume she wanted me to be able to defend myself if I needed to.
The best you can do is build a strong bond of trust between you and your child and then trust they will be able to handle those situations and if they do slip up or get peer pressured that trust is built where yall can talk it out. This just seems like general parenting struggles caring parents go through.
And I’m positive a nazi would also tell me to raise my child to be open minded to their ideals, so I’d take that kind of advice as a lark.
I don't have kids (yet?) but I was raised vegetarian (Indian upper caste family). A vegan diet can be easily adapted for a child's needs. I think it's good that the (uncalled-for) remark by your colleague made you think about this, it means that you care about this issue more deeply than most people do, who just feed kids what they are cooking for themselves. I think the point that another commenter made about getting kids exposed, in a safe way, to allergens is very important. I'd even go far as letting them eat meat very very occasionally - who knows, there may be a time in the future where your need to survive will be against your need to be vegan.
I actually started eating meat after I moved out of India, and I'm hoping to shift to a vegan diet when things are more stable in my life. But personally, even if I don't ever eat any other kind of meat, I want to be able to eat beef, in some symbolic and meaningless way at least. Hindu vegetarianism is a toxic thing, it is absolutely not about not harming animals but about upper castes adopting a "pure" diet, and even then they make exceptions because that is how this bullshit works. I loathe the way Indian vegetarianism is mentioned in a positive way without these aspects being known. The same vegetarians will never give up milk, even though they know about the hell a cow has to go through. In India, you are judged by your dietary habits, you may not be able to rent if you eat meat. I've seen my friends in school getting bullied because they got some meat for lunch. Sorry for this off topic rant, but had to vent.
occasionally - who knows, there may be a time in the future where your need to survive will be against your need to be vegan.
Well it's like other people in this thread are saying. Veganism is a choice, and it's a choice I personally view as liberation. It's a freedom to not rely upon animal death and it's a freedom we can share with animals. Veganism isn't a religion or anything. If I'm in a situation where animal products are a necessity, then I'm still vegan because at my core I believe in animal liberation. Like I don't criticize indigenous people who hunt or make leather, I don't criticize poor people who do things like fishing. I'm vegan and I know this is a choice I'm making within the context of what's available to me. Like you said, your life isn't stable at the moment.
Thank you for sharing your perspective though. It is true I want to consider the reality of raising a vegan family. I don't consider it immoral to put a kid on a vegan diet at all though, although I am realizing most of my peers would call this abusive. I can't see it that way.
I'm like you, I was raised in a household centered around meat and hunting. My dad would shoot raccoons, deer, et and eat them. I think part of my veganism is a response to that. It always seemed unnecessary, like my dad was doing things out of his own pride rather than need
I’m with you through so much of this but you’re really gonna be a “I’m gonna eat TWO steaks cause you don’t eat any!” person to own the Hindus? Why not just assert total moral superiority over them going vegan, knowing milk is murder and abuse?
It's not about owning Hindus though. Let me give you some context. In Karnataka, an important South Indian state that the BJP (the far-right Hindutva party) won some time ago, there was a quite popular free lunch program, provided by the previous government. Their idea was to make poor kids feel like there is some point in going to school, and at the same time fix nutritional deficiencies. One of the items in the lunch would be a boiled egg, which you could refuse if you wished. Eggs being a cheap and great source of protein, made it an easy fix for the carbs heavy Indian diet. BJP comes in, and removes this option, largely due to pressure from their upper caste electorate, who mostly wouldn't even make use of the free lunch, but can't cope with children eating eggs, which are considered "non-veg" in India. In some sense, BJP could be seen as lessening the suffering of chickens, but I would never accept this kind of reasoning.
Beef is effectively banned from being sold and even eaten in like >80% of India. It's not just enough that Hindu upper castes, who have a religious obligation to not eat beef (even this is debatable), but they will not let Muslims and Christians, who have no such obligation, eat beef. People get routinely lynched to death because they are suspected of "trafficking" beef. If you get the cops to bother to look into this, they send the meat to a lab to know if it is indeed beef. This is the level of insanity that Indians have to deal with. And some BJP supporters have now started talking about how this is good for the planet and cuts down on animal suffering, as if keeping cows in factory farms and getting them raped repeatedly so they can be milked efficiently is somehow better.
If animal suffering is the only thing you are considering, then it shouldn't matter if you are being forced into not eating meat or not. Personally, I want to eliminate meat from my diet but I will stand for a person's right to eat meat. I realize this is an odd stand, and it is possibly even inconsistent, but I hope I have explained where it is coming from.
Well, you’re definitely onto something. The Hindus are using this as a tool to enforce hierarchies, and that’s bad. Actually vegetarianism was famously employed by the Nazis too basically to assert purity and wash their hands of other moral issues. I’m unable to get on board with a right to eat meat, considering that animal didn’t and can’t consent to be eaten and we don’t need to eat animals, but I respect your outlook and understand where you’re coming from.
