I think that for a situation like this to arise would be so incredibly rare as to possibly never happen. Yes, the parents and the child can get into a pissing match, but if the parents are sufficiently stubborn, I would think the child would cave. Human beings will not starve themselves when food is available unless there is an underlying health issue with regard to eating meat.
I dunno. Humans regularly make nutritionally suboptimal choices for reasons that are much less compelling than a strong ethical conviction or a strong emotional sensibility. Plus, I’m much more inclined to be stubborn in my views about what I will eat than I am about what other people ought to eat so I reckon that, all other things being equal, if a pissing contest over what someone will eat is going to be won by the more stubborn participant in the contest, the person whose eating is in issue is more likely to be the winner.
I agree, the conversation has become slighly unreal. The number of kids who are hospitalised for malnutrition because they refuse to eat meat and their parents refuse to feed them anything else is probably vanishingly small. But the question asked by the OP was more realistic - can parents force their kids to eat meat? And the practical answer is “no” - they can cajole, blandish, persuade, threaten, urge, etc, but tying them to the bed and force-feeding with a gastric tube is not really on. And in the end the parent is the adult in the situation; they do have a responsibility to see that the child doesn’t come to harm. If all else fails they have to discharge the responsiblity by providing a non-meat diet that is at least minimally nutritionally adequate.
I knew someone who tried forcing their kid to eat meat. This (predictably?) produced a life-long vegetarian.
My daughter is a psudo-vegetarian (she’s 3) her mom and I are already getting tried of it and starting to force her to go to bed hungry if she doesn’t eat with the rest of the family. I can very much see having a child who is 14 and wants to have their meals tailored to them. I dislike cooking two different meals and I don’t like eating vegetarian when I do so the meal I cook is at least going to be enjoyable for me. We always keep dried beans and rice in the house and peanut butter & jelly & bread and she would be welcome to that but beyond that she can buy her own food in addition to cooking her own meals.
When I was 12 I taught myself to cook, with my mother’s help. I became vegetarian when I was 17. Two of my sisters had already preceded me in that. My parents may not have liked it, but seeing that I was capable of feeding myself, and I was also busy educating myself about nutrition, they never interfered, and everyone was happy. It was never any kind of issue.
When my sisters and I were grown up, my parents’ table developed a distinct gradation: at one end where my father sat was roast beef. In the middle was chicken for my mother, my kids, most of my sisters, etc. At the opposite end was vegetarian entrées for my sister, BIL, and me. It was my dad who required beef specially prepared for him. My vegetarian sister & I took care of our own food. It’s like my dad was the petulant child at the table.
My wife and son are both vegetarian. I am not. I do all the cooking. It’s not difficult.
I’m sure this has something to do with the Green New Deal which is going to outlaw hamburgers. Luckily the GOP is introducing a bill that requires everyone to eat a least one hamburger with every meal made from antibiotic laced GMO corn fed cows.
My point is that it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide a certain standard of care, whether it be shoes, pants, mattress, food, etc…
That standard of care doesn’t have to include the child’s opinions- would we think it was equally valid if a kid refused to wear synthetics because they’re made from oil, and the parents dug in and said “No, you’ll wear the hand-me-down polyester coat because we have it in-hand, and don’t want to spend extra $$$ to buy you a special one.”
Of course not- you’ve got a perfectly good coat, and the child is refusing to wear it. They’re welcome to go buy their own coat or be cold if they don’t like it.
Same thing with food- if the parents are providing a reasonably nutritious diet that includes meat, then if the child chooses not to eat it, that’s their problem, not the parents.
Now of course, most families will come to some kind of accommodation- I have a vegetarian, although not vegan nephew, and in general, we try to up the veggie content of meals, and if there’s a vegetarian option that we can get in conjunction with the meat one, we’ll do that. For example, if we’re getting tamales, we’ll get 2/3 pork, 1/3 bean & cheese or spinach & mushroom.
But it’s not incumbent on the parents to cave to their kids’ stubbornness; that sets a horrible precedent, especially earlier on in a child’s life.
In the case of food, the parents are already in the store where vegan food is sold, are willing to spend money to buy food of some sort, but are unwilling to buy vegan friendly foods because of their own personal beliefs.
If the child winds up malnourished (an extreme hypothetical*) the State has a responsibility to review if the parents are capable of giving the child a living environment where the child can be properly nourished. Whose fault it is becomes beside the point, the child is incapable of being fully responsible for their own care, if the parents cannot give the child an environment where all the child’s needs are met, as in an environment where they eat nourishing food, then something must be done.
This would be thought of differently if the child was medically incapable of eating meat, and parents refused to adjust their cooking to give the child complete nutrition. Our hypothetical child is psychologically incapable of eating meat.
*The reality is that this most often occurs when vegan parents fail to provide small children with adequate nutrition.
It’s already pretty hard-core in Australia?
Could be that the parents can only afford one set of ingredients. Not that the situation is terribly likely, but there are multiple reasons why parents might not choose to indulge a child’s dietary preferences beyond personal beliefs.
I mean, if it was my child, they’d have the option to eat what the family was eating, or make do by themselves. Not because I have any particular stake in carnivorism or against vegetarianism, but because they’re choosing not to eat what’s provided, and by default, that’s a choice to DIY your own meals.
Just like if my children decide that they want Canada Goose jackets or parkas, then they can pay the difference to get one, or they can do without. I don’t think that’s unreasonable in the least bit. If they’re stupid enough to get hypothermia or frostbite because they refuse to wear anything but a Canada Goose parka, then I can’t imagine anyone would hold me responsible if I had offered a Columbia or North Face and they refused .
I mean, I’m not going to force my children or even try and set them up to have to DIY things. But if they have a hard stand on something like being a vegetarian, having to take care of their own meals beyond what we serve is a consequence of those beliefs. And it’s also a lesson of sorts, in that taking a stand like that does often come with consequences, and that they should be aware of those consequences before jumping in with both feet.
CPS officer: Can you explain why your 5 year old was hospitalized with hypothermia?
Parent: Well, he refused to wear the coat I offered to him, so I figured, fuck him, it’s his problem now.
CPS Officer: 
At some point, as the adult who is responsible for the welfare of this child, you have to protect the child from the dangerous consequences of the choices they make, even if you find it inconvenient.
That starts to shade off into mental illness - of the child. It isn’t normal to freeze rather than wear a less expensive parka.
If you want more of something from a child, you reinforce it. If you want less of something, you ignore it. Catering to a tantrum isn’t ignoring it.
Normal children do a certain amount of this, but come on.
My little sister used to hold her breath until she passed out if she didn’t get what she wanted. What did my mom do about it? Nothing. My sister managed to survive into adulthood (and is a very nice and lovable person). But most of the time, a normal child who announces he would rather starve to death than eat what the rest of the family eats changes his mind after the second missed meal or so. If he doesn’t, there’s something else going on, and it isn’t necessarily bad parenting.
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry for the late reply. I am not sure I understand your question. Yes, this is a legitimate question, intended for Great Debates. I only mention the “joke” because it keeps coming to my mind for some reason. I didn’t mean it to sidetrack the discussion.
If a child takes off her coat and stuffs it in her backpack between home and the bus stop, are the parents at fault?
The analogies are getting a bit far afield. I claimed that parents are responsible for the welfare of their children. If you know your child isn’t wearing the coat you offered, and your attitude is “I offered it, so it’s not my problem anymore” you are transferring that responsibility (or part of it) to the child. If you know your child isn’t wearing the coat, and you allow that child to be in a place where wearing that coat is critical for their safety, you’re not taking their safety seriously. So too with things like seatbelts and lifejackets.
Shodan is right that it starts to approach a mental illness based issue if the refusal to eat something specific continues to the point of malnutrition. However, children do sometimes have mental illnesses, and unreasonable boundaries on what they will and won’t do. It isn’t inherently sad, terrible parenting to warm up a can of beans along with your roast beast.
Yes it is. It teaches your children that your words and directives mean nothing; that if they are stubborn or persistent enough, they can get what they want.
There’s a big gap between a commitment to vegetarianism under normal circumstances where you exercise choice over your nourishment and literally refusing to eat to the point of malnutrition. For example, when committed vegetarians get marooned at sea, they tend to eat fish rather than starve if they can manage to catch any.
Very few people have the determination to force a hunger strike to actual malnutrition when food is available. I agree that the personal strength of conviction required to do so isn’t really an “eating disorder”, but it’s far from normal.
Yeah, they make suboptimal choices like eating junk food that’s easily accessible and tastes good. But those are easy lazy choices that are rewarded by pretty deep-seated biological feedback loops.
Refusing to eat meat as you dwindle away for lack of protein is the exact opposite. It’s an increasingly hard choice that fights against biology. Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It’s pretty hard to focus on psychological needs like ethical considerations when you are literally starving and someone’s offering you a hamburger.
It takes extreme commitment to avoid eating available tasty calories for philosophical reasons.
One thing that I haven’t noticed people talking about is how unlikely the whole thing is. I can imagine parents who don’t want to bother cooking differently, or who are punishing their kids for being different, but beans are really cheap and can be eaten cold out of the can. So for a kid to slide into malnutrition over lack of protein, in addition to all the above about how hard it would be for most people to resist eating readily available food, the parents would have to exert such control over them that they can’t manage to get to a store and buy a can of beans.
The confluence of parents so unwavering and domineering, and a minor child so dedicated to a way of belief and yet also so unresourceful that they can’t figure out how to sneak a can of beans seems awfully farfetched.
I hope that my children learn that if there’s something they really believe in strongly that takes incredibly minimal effort on my part to help them achieve, they should persist in asking for it. Although I’d make them warm up their own damn beans.
We all get to make our own parenting decisions, but… are you actually coming down on the parents side in this?
Agreed, what a terrible thing for children to learn. Much better to make them go hungry until they give up on their beliefs.
Right, parents have a lot of control over their kids- they can force them to go to church, get vaccinated, go to a particular school, etc.
I’d be far more concerned with certain cults brainwashing their kids, like the Jack Mormon polygamous & pedophila & Incest cults in those compounds.
Meat is actually good for you.
Of course, once the child become a adult and can buy their own food, they have every right to switch to a vegan diet. And I have no issues with a child *requesting *such a diet.