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?
Veganism is the healthiest diet a kid can eat, cornonary heart disease starts in childhood on a meat heavy diet. But more importantly you instill your morals to your children, you teach them it’s wrong to eat meat. Children are actually really receptive to veganism because we’re naturally animal lovers and it’s not hard to explain where meat comes from.
Sure they can experiment as they grow up, that’s natural and we live in a meat centric society. But that’s the risk you take in parenthood, your child is their own person and they can make their decisions as they grow up.
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.
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.
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 am the vegan kid. Just raise them vegan and tell them why, but maybe let them try it if the alternative presents itself, idk. My parents were vegetarian, and I went vegan.
I’d probably only let them try if they gave me a good reason, and that reason would probably have to relate to social acceptance or difficulty acclimating to daily life where I live.
I mean I wouldn’t get mad if they were at a friend’s house and had some pizza. I’m not gonna fly off the handle or even punish them, that wouldn’t be cool and I don’t want any potential kids seeing veganism as a restriction or a punishment. Veganism to me is liberation and it should be experienced that way.
Did you have difficulty growing up? Did other kids mock you or anything? I was vegetarian then vegan as a kid too but I had no support from family or any adults.
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.
