Vegan Children

tim gier

vegan children

Posted on November 21, 2010 by timgier



Every person ought to answer important moral questions for themselves, only after they have thought them through, giving all due consideration to the facts in evidence. Children below a certain age aren’t generally equipped to answer these kinds of questions. Whether one wants to participate in the use of nonhuman individuals as things to eat or wear is such a question. We don’t expect young children to be able to understand complex moral reasoning, so it’s not likely that they can grapple with the concepts involved in human-nonhuman relations.

So what should the parents and grandparents of young children do? Should they let children eat “meat”? No.

Notice that I did not ask what the vegan parents of young children should do. If you’re the parents or grandparents of young children, it shouldn’t matter whether you eat other animals, or what your own moral reasoning informs you about the question. Young children shouldn’t eat other animals, period.

Here’s why.

In a world where the eating of other animals is pervasive and normalized, anyone who eats other animals from an early age will accept and adopt, without question, the dominant views of society. When young children reach the age where they are equipped to answer important moral questions, if they’ve lived their lives up to that point participating in activities which are properly within the reach of such questions, it will be difficult for them to approach such questions with an open mind. Someone who has been told all of their lives that there’s no moral question at stake considering their use of other animals as food and clothing will have a hard time answering that question; they may not even recognize that there is a question at all. We know this is true; most people don’t even think about it, they just eat “meat”, because they always have.

Now, a parent who is a “meat” eater might object, saying that raising a child vegan handicaps them in the opposite way. If one was to teach a child from an early age that eating other animals is something they don’t do, it would make it difficult for the child to reach a different decision once they were able to think through the issue on their own. This objection will not stand.

At every turn, the accepted exploitation of nonhumans presents itself to us – we can’t escape it. Any child raised vegan will be reminded constantly that they are different, that they are in the minority and that, in order to conform, they ought to eat “meat”. If they one day decide that they should eat “meat”, they will face little resistance from the outside world; it would be easy to join in with the crowd.

At the same time, by virtue of having not participated in a behavior all of their lives, they don’t carry a predisposition to engage in the activity, but neither do they have a predisposition to do something else. One who doesn’t eat animals doesn’t substitute something else for them, they just eat all the other things that most people eat anyway.

To illustrate this point, consider another aspect of child rearing. Suppose that two people of completely different religions marry, one a Hindu and the other Catholic. They want their child to make up her own mind as to which religion to follow. So, they raise her without religious training of any kind. When the time comes, she has no predisposition for the Hindu, or the Catholic religion; neither has been substituted for the other, nor has any other religion been substituted for either of them. The child is free and unencumbered by prejudice to consider each religion on its own merits, and to adopt, or not adopt, the one she deems most worthy, as the case may be.

Now, I doubt that many well-intentioned people would deny that every adult competent person is free to adopt the religion of their choosing. Nor will it be doubted that it is most often the case that religious people adopt the religion of their parents. Since most religious people raise their children in their own religion, they must not consider their children competent to choose religion on their own. By choosing which religion their children will be raised in, they deny their children the very opportunity to adopt the religion of their own choosing. They do not respect their children as independent individuals, but they treat them as things upon which they can impose their own beliefs.

The same is true when children are raised eating “meat”. Nearly everyone will agree that whether one chooses to eat other animals is something one has the right to decide for oneself. Few would insist upon, or force another to, eat “meat” against their will. But many parents and grandparents think nothing at all of imposing their will on young children, denying them the full chance to exercise their autonomy. They treat children as things, upon which they can impose their own beliefs.

There are two final objections to consider briefly. The first concerns religion, and asks, what if something tragic happens and a child dies before choosing her religion, before “knowing God” . It begs the question of whether God exists, but supposing God does exist, it seems unlikely that God would hold a child responsible for not having made a moral decision which she is incapable of making. God would be more forgiving than that. The second considers eating other animals and asks, what if it is vital to the health of the child to eat other animals, aren’t the parents and grandparents then obligated to feed the child “meat”? If it were true that it is only by eating other animals that young children can thrive, then it would be the case that children ought to eat them. But, unless every major health and nutrition authority in the modern Western world is incorrect, it simple isn’t the case that a child needs to eat other animals to thrive. It may be the case that the parents and grandparents of a child raised vegan needs to be more attentive to the dietary needs of such a child. Paying close attention to the nutritional needs of youngsters ought to be considered a good thing, and not a problem. In any case, the overarching principle of respecting the autonomy of individuals should outweigh any issues of inconvenience or tedious planning on the part of parents.

Children are not things upon which parents and grandparents should impose their will, prejudicing the children as to the moral questions they eventually will face and have to resolve for themselves. Children are individuals, who are here for themselves, and until they are able to face and resolve moral questions on their own, the job of parents and grandparents is ensure that they remain free and able to one day face those questions with an open mind, on their own terms, without prejudice or the burden of predisposition.

Whether you think it’s OK to eat “meat” or not, you shouldn’t raise your child to eat or wear other animals. It is simply not your choice to make.