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
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 :/
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.
Id suggest you sarcastically highlight their idiotic hypocrisy (do they cook vegan meals for their children every night? Do they sincerely think you should cook three meals - vegan, vegetarian and carnist - every night? Do they think “eating meat” means they have to eat meat every day?) but you probably have to spend a lot of time with them since they’re your coworkers and it sounds like they’re idiots that won’t listen, so I wouldn’t bother.
Whatever you can do that shuts them up the fastest and makes them leave you alone, is what I think you should do.
Alternatively get pamphlets from every religious denomination and give them to their kids if you ever meet them - they want them to have choice, right?
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.
I can understand getting anxious about that, but I don’t really see how it tracks.
I guess I can understand in a sort of “don’t freak out if your kid has some meat when eating at a friend’s place” but it doesn’t really sound like that’s what they’re saying. It sounds like they’re saying you have a moral failing for being vegan and having a vegan household, and that’s just not true.
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
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.
