How do you respond when someone tells you that raising your baby as a vegan is wrong?
How do you respond when someone tells you that raising your baby as a vegan is wrong?
"It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done."
Personally, I wouldn't waste my time responding. If you can walk away and tell them you don't want an argument, I think that's the best thing to do. It's obvious that when someone makes a statement such as this they are looking for an argument, so one option is not to give it to them. On the flip side, if you don't mind educating people you can always explain to them why they are wrong. I just get tired of justifying myself because most of the time people don't believe or care about what I have to say.
And alas I have arrived, like a whirlwind at a kindergarten picnic.
I agree Odinsfury, dont bother wasting your time on stupid people who wont listen anyway. I mean your only not feeding them dairy, eggs and meat, its not a crime. With all this talk about feeding kids crap like McDs etc, i dont think anyone has to right to say someone is wrong to feed there baby breast milk, then fruit, veg, lentils etc
I guess it depends who's asking. Ask them why they think it's wrong, then use the info you have to put across your point of view.
What annoys me are people who say children shouldn't be vegan yet they feed their own kids fast food, sugary snacks, and barely any fresh produce.
Peace, love, and happiness.
Usually people try to tell me that it's not fair not to give children a choice about having animal products or not. Well, it's just the same the other way round, isn't it? Omnis don't give their children the choice of not having animal products. Simple as that.
First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man.
Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.
Victor Hugo
Excellent point Tigerlily. I saw a couple with a child in the supermarket the other day; their trolley was laden with meat, cakes, biscuits and convenience foods. Not a piece of fruit or veg in sight.
It's funny how I find myself looking in the shopping carts of other people at the store now.
You're absolutely right about that. It's as if making their kids eat meat from the time they can start eating it isn't a choice, it's just something you do. The moment we deprive our children of animal product we're denying them a choice. It's a good thing I'm not a violent person, people frustrate me deeply sometimes.
And alas I have arrived, like a whirlwind at a kindergarten picnic.
When I am pregnant/when I'm a mum I'm going to prepare pamphlets with info about vegan nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding and childhood and the health benefits of it, compared to omni diet. When they ask me about being vegan I'll hand them one, smile and walk away.
But then I have a bit of a reputation for being aggressive and wilful (all lies ), so I doubt anyone will dare ask!
I think you should raise your child any way you want. There are many cultures and many religions that impose dietary restrictions on their followers and we do not judge them for what they do or do not eat.
I think raising your child vegan is infinitely better than raising them on the junk food and snacks that so many parents are feeding their kids on these days.
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
I've never received comments of that sort either. One look at my healthy cheerful toddler would've been enough to silence anyone. Hmm....maybe that's why there were never any comments....they all dried up in a blast of vegan wellness?
"You can discover more about a person in one hour of play than in a year of conversation" ~ Plato
i've had ppl say lost of times to me: "you can't deprive your child of the choice to eat meat, it's not fair", as soon as they got to know i was vegan...and i'm VERY far away from having kids..so go figure. i wonder how their mind work..
Piggy
A mate of mine from work tried to start an argument about Veganism, and got very angry when he asked whether I'd raise my (theoretical) kids as Vegans, and I said yes.
I mean really quite uptight He said that it was really unhealthy and that there's things in meat kids *need*. I asked him what it was, and he said he couldn't remember
I told him to email me it when he finds out...
...he still hasn't, that was 3 months ago
Maybe he saw this.
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
I've never had anyone say this to me, but I think I would find it hard to not put them right if they did. I've had a few people question me about feeding the kids vegan, but as soon as they realise that you know about nutrition, they back down. To me being vegan is part of making the world a better place so if I don't explain myself to people who find it hard to understand, it sort of loses it's point.
I think the main issue is that people feel children are missing out on treats.
I'm interested in why you ask the question GreenEnvy?
raising a vegan child is no different than raising a child within the guidelines of a particular religion.
it is simply following your views.
people who think its immoral are just ignorant to the details of veganism .
all i will say when people question me about my (future) children being vegan is .... hmmm well at least mine eat (& like) thier vegetables and dont have behavioral issues (ehhh hem).
the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, dunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
-henry miller
Sure - and check the facts.it is simply following your views.
They may be ignorant, but IMHO - most of all, they are mis-informed (or not informed at all).people who think its immoral are just ignorant to the details of veganism .
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
I just realised that, with the addition of one letter, the title of this thread would be 'Vegan babies are immortal'!
It's amazing what a bottle of Strongbow will do!
What makes them think raising a child to eat animal products isnt? If choice is the basis of their argument, choice means both ways.
the latest guidelines for babies are nearly vegan anyway..... with breastmilk for at least a full year.
I have always said that my little one could have whatever she wanted to eat when she was old enough to know where it came from... she's always chosen vegan!
We don't make kids vegan; we just set them a good example
the only animal ingredient in my food is cat hair
exactly... when my (theoretical) kids are old enough to buy thier own food, they may purchase whatever they want, but while im providing for them i refuse to support animal cruelty. plain & simple.
the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, dunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
-henry miller
i think the response i would give (and i haven't had the chance to yet) is that a well thought out diet is never immoral. the majority of the time more thought is put into the planning and preparation of vegan meals than is put into omnivorous meals.
that's not to say that there are not any vegan parents out there who don't know what they're doing and aren't doing anything to change that. but there are many omnivorous ones like that. malnutrition comes in many forms, and fattening your child up on fast food and other quick fixes like fast food should qualify as malnutrition.
so, anyone who is just letting their child eat whatever the crap is easiest is just as immoral as the so-called vegans who think that by just avoiding the animal products available for consumption without thinking about the nutritive value of the rest of their food.
and any parent who thinks about and plans and feeds their children a balanced diet in whatever form that comes in is doing a fine job.
morals are so personal. i think 'immoral' is probably the wrong word. some would say that eating animal products is immoral, and they wouldn't be wrong... for themselves. but a person cannot blanket others with their personal morals. agreed upon cultural morals... that's a bit different.
hannah, 28 (vegan), bryce, 28 (ovolacto), xylia born january 2005 (vegan)
Every time I see this thread title I think it says 'vegan babies are immortal'
Can't add much else except to say that all parents must take some responsibility for what they feed their babies but many don't even think about it, let alone make a conscious choice, and that feels pretty immoral to me .
One time a girl in class said to me "You're going to FORCE your children to be vegan??" I didn't say anything at the time, just bit my tongue. But I imagine how funny it would have been if I said "Are you going to FORCE your children to be hispanic??"
(nothing against hispanics at all, just showing how dumb her comment is. culture is culture)
I eat nutritional yeast by the spoonful.
I've also heard that one...One time a girl in class said to me "You're going to FORCE your children to be vegan??
These people fail to see the potentially other alternatives:
To force animals to die/suffer in order to satisfy kids' tastebuds.
To foce parents to act against their own concept of right and wrong, eg. by expecting them to support an industry they want a total boycott of.
To force parents to support their kids in developing bad (unhealthy, unethical) eating habits they may have difficulties in letting go of when they grow up.
Helping their kids to follow mainstream viewpoints instead of showing the great alternatives.
Non-vegans may forget that all parents influence their kids' eating habits in one way or the other. If I child asks for CocaCola for breakfast, and an omni would say that they need to eat some real food instead, would they have taken a similar comment ('Are you FORCING your child to eat breakfast instead of Coke??) seriously? I don't think so...
People also often forget that the words 'force' and 'freedom' aren't that one-dimensional: one child's freedom will often reduce the freedom of other humans or animals.
No religion, philosophy or law suggests that freedom to do whatever you want - that hurts others - should be supported.
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
My sister is the most ignorant person on the face of the planet. I've discussed the issue of raising my theoretical kids vegan and she went ape sh*t! She told me that I was "depriving" them and that they wouldn't grow up to be as healthy etc. Now forgive me if I'm wrong...I was a kid in the late 80's, early 90's as were her children, and all we were fed was sweets, choclate, Enumbers, beef, chicken and pork. Nothing else really and my parents were vegetarian. I have a full mouth of fillings...not one tooth unfilled from the litres of Ribena and packets of fruit pastels. I suffered severe phnemonia and anemia. All because of my diet. Her kids were in and out of hospital their entire lives and still are...yet I am never sick now. My oldest neice (20) has a one year old son...my great nephew. She feeds him like sh*t. Everytime I go over there he is eating choclate or stuffing something nasty in his mouth. The last time I went over he was eating a bowl of meatballs in gravy. My niece said that I used to love meatballs...and I replied that I still did...just the vegan ones. That started off the whole debate again about my theoretical kids and how they will starve. My family are so uneducated and unintelligent at the best of times...why did I expect them to understand? (I'm not the brightest spark myself...so don't think I'm going off on unintelligent people....I'm just well informed )
The taste of anything in my mouth for 5 seconds does not equate to the beauty and complexity of life.
According to http://www.starvation.net/, every 2.43 seconds someone dies from starvation. According to the same site, "somewhere around 85% of these starvation deaths occur in children 5 years of age or younger." Over 200 million children under the age of five in developing countries are malnourished. According to Dennis Avery, Director of the Centre for Global Food Issues, "The world must create five billions vegans in the next several decades, or triple its total farm output without using more land." (D. T. Avery, 'Intensive Farming and Biotechnology: Saving People and Wildlife in the 21st Century,' The Meat Business, G. Tansey & J. D'Silva (eds) Earthscan Publications, 1999).
Animals raised for food have to eat up to 16 pounds of grain to create just 1 pound of meat. What can be immoral about feeding one's children with a diet that isn't only the best solution, but also the only solution if we want to address the world hunger problem, instead of giving them a diet that's part of the reason that 850 million people go hungry every day, but which also is bad for their health, for the environment, and definitely bad for the animals?
The world hunger situation is complex, and has to do with a lot more than just what people eat, but feeding children animal products is totally unethical IMO - and some people have a hard time seeing that the main reason the feed their kids what they do is that their own parents have them the same kind of food. They like the taste of animal products based on habits they got when they were kids. What they 'like' and what they focus on is all about habits, and they probably won't even think about what it means to pass these habits over to the next generation, or that they're an important part of the reason that someone dies from starvation every few seconds.
From The Vegan Society:
Feeding the world
From The Guardian:
Why vegans were right all along - Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat, fish and dairy
Last edited by Korn; Jun 25th, 2007 at 11:11 AM. Reason: Changed two words. One of them was plain wrong. :)
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
I read that article in 2002 when it was published and I wasn't even vegan. They need to do a more up to date one now especially with all this hype about green living at the moment...anyway off topic!
The taste of anything in my mouth for 5 seconds does not equate to the beauty and complexity of life.
If someone said that to my face, I wouldn't be able to stop from laughing.
If someone said that online, then I'd most likely ignore it if possible, becuase that's such a load of BS that there's not even a dignified response.
If that was something I couldn't ignore, then I'd break it down. First, I'd really LISTEN to hear what that person means by "immoral", and really get to the heart of what they say, then fuck their whole world up with a simply placed argument. To do that, you need to really LISTEN to what their concern is, and chances are that it doens't make any sense, yet they base a lot of assumption on it.
But that last option is a lot of work, so it' rarely worth going there, unless it's a little vindictive
context is everything
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