this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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49
Does anyone have experience raising vegan kids? What's that like? (hexbear.net)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
59 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (9 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

@[email protected]

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Awesome! I'm glad that was a success.

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