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?
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.
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.
