Children as Property
I have friends who are vegan and I like cooking for them because it's always a pleasant challenge to devise a menu which is completely free from animal products, even if I don't eat that way all the time.
But I do think it's crazy for parents to bring their children up as vegans, as if their offspring have to be indoctrinated in a certain lifestyle choice for years instead of being allowed to grow up with an appreciation of different kinds of foods and then making up their own minds.
Which is also what should happen when it comes to religion and religious belief because all this 'faith of our fathers' (or mothers) business is whole load of old bollix, if you ask me.
My toddler is vegan. What’s the problem?
Feeding my son has been fairly straightforward. Dealing with people’s prejudices has been the hardest part
By Sarah Campbell - The Guardian
'I had been at the mercy of advertisements, supermarket layouts and my son’s own unique form of screaming persuasion.' Photograph: Andrew Findlay/Alamy
I had never met a vegan before I became one myself, so was a little naive about how it would be greeted by my friends and family. As I started explaining my new dietary choice to the people in my life who had noticed I wasn’t partaking of my two favourite foods (cheese and more cheese), barely an eyebrow was raised. But when I mentioned that my two and a half-year-old son would be joining me on a vegan diet, it was a different story. I simply wasn’t prepared for the hostility I was to face.
It turned out that saying you have a vegan child is to immediately put your credibility as a parent under scrutiny. I was accused of forcing my son to adopt an extreme diet on a whim, making him part of an unnecessary and dangerous experiment.
After a while, I became unwilling to talk about it. I started telling people I was vegan but that my son was lacto-vegetarian, a small change that made all the difference. I have since learned that other vegan parents use this tactic to avoid uncomfortable conversations. I was treated to the same questions I get asked about myself: what about protein? What about iron and the ever-elusive B12? The answers about my own nutrition were accepted but the information I had about my son’s diet was treated as suspicious and potentially false.
I had taken all the facts at my disposal and made a decision – one that, after considering the health, environmental and ethical considerations, I felt was best for my son. After a few weeks I began to suspect that this, in fact, was the problem: not that my son was on an atypical diet but that he was atypical anything. Could it be that in a society focused on individualism, rich in diversity and multiculturalism, children’s upbringing is one of the last bastions of intolerant adherence to tradition? I started wondering if home-schooling parents faced the same level of scrutiny and criticism.
When feeding my son what would be considered the mainstream diet, I had abided by guideline daily amounts (GDAs) and the NHS eat well plate – the traditional notion of a balanced diet, which includes a “food and drink high in fat and sugar” component. When I switched my son’s diet, it occurred to me I had been following the rules without doing any thinking for myself.
Choosing veganism made me aware of pressures that I hadn’t even realised were there until they were gone. In restaurants we ordered from the kids’ menu, and I had been at the mercy of advertisements, supermarket layouts and my son’s own unique form of screaming persuasion. His pre-veganism lunchtime was chaos. Spitting and screaming from his booster seat, he would throw himself back and forth until the chair fell over if I offered him a piece of broccoli one too many times. Thankfully, there were a few meals he loved: fish fingers, spaghetti bolognese and chicken nuggets were guaranteed to get gobbled. Eating a meat- and dairy-rich diet eventually turned me into a complacent parent. I assumed he was getting everything he needed; it didn’t occur to me he could be getting too much. Since turning vegan I have become fully engaged in making the best possible food choices for him and, after a few weeks of scraping lentil curries out of the carpet, I have noticed that he has begun cleaning his plate.
In a world full of alarming statistics regarding the health of our children, surely people should be encouraged to discuss alternatives to the current mainstream diet. But if my experiences of asking medical professionals for advice about veganism are anything to go by, you’re as likely to be handed a printout about potential problems and sent on your way.
Despite all the talk of nutrient deficiencies and slower growth rates, feeding my vegan toddler has been fairly straightforward; the hardest part has been dealing with people’s misinformation and prejudices. That, and giving up cheese.
My jaw dropped while reading this spectacularly stupid news story in the Sunday Times - because I find it ridiculous that a family giving a child up for adoption can expect to influence how that child should be raised.
I had never met a vegan before I became one myself, so was a little naive about how it would be greeted by my friends and family. As I started explaining my new dietary choice to the people in my life who had noticed I wasn’t partaking of my two favourite foods (cheese and more cheese), barely an eyebrow was raised. But when I mentioned that my two and a half-year-old son would be joining me on a vegan diet, it was a different story. I simply wasn’t prepared for the hostility I was to face.
It turned out that saying you have a vegan child is to immediately put your credibility as a parent under scrutiny. I was accused of forcing my son to adopt an extreme diet on a whim, making him part of an unnecessary and dangerous experiment.
After a while, I became unwilling to talk about it. I started telling people I was vegan but that my son was lacto-vegetarian, a small change that made all the difference. I have since learned that other vegan parents use this tactic to avoid uncomfortable conversations. I was treated to the same questions I get asked about myself: what about protein? What about iron and the ever-elusive B12? The answers about my own nutrition were accepted but the information I had about my son’s diet was treated as suspicious and potentially false.
I had taken all the facts at my disposal and made a decision – one that, after considering the health, environmental and ethical considerations, I felt was best for my son. After a few weeks I began to suspect that this, in fact, was the problem: not that my son was on an atypical diet but that he was atypical anything. Could it be that in a society focused on individualism, rich in diversity and multiculturalism, children’s upbringing is one of the last bastions of intolerant adherence to tradition? I started wondering if home-schooling parents faced the same level of scrutiny and criticism.
When feeding my son what would be considered the mainstream diet, I had abided by guideline daily amounts (GDAs) and the NHS eat well plate – the traditional notion of a balanced diet, which includes a “food and drink high in fat and sugar” component. When I switched my son’s diet, it occurred to me I had been following the rules without doing any thinking for myself.
Choosing veganism made me aware of pressures that I hadn’t even realised were there until they were gone. In restaurants we ordered from the kids’ menu, and I had been at the mercy of advertisements, supermarket layouts and my son’s own unique form of screaming persuasion. His pre-veganism lunchtime was chaos. Spitting and screaming from his booster seat, he would throw himself back and forth until the chair fell over if I offered him a piece of broccoli one too many times. Thankfully, there were a few meals he loved: fish fingers, spaghetti bolognese and chicken nuggets were guaranteed to get gobbled. Eating a meat- and dairy-rich diet eventually turned me into a complacent parent. I assumed he was getting everything he needed; it didn’t occur to me he could be getting too much. Since turning vegan I have become fully engaged in making the best possible food choices for him and, after a few weeks of scraping lentil curries out of the carpet, I have noticed that he has begun cleaning his plate.
In a world full of alarming statistics regarding the health of our children, surely people should be encouraged to discuss alternatives to the current mainstream diet. But if my experiences of asking medical professionals for advice about veganism are anything to go by, you’re as likely to be handed a printout about potential problems and sent on your way.
Despite all the talk of nutrient deficiencies and slower growth rates, feeding my vegan toddler has been fairly straightforward; the hardest part has been dealing with people’s misinformation and prejudices. That, and giving up cheese.
Babies as Property (3 February 2014)
No child is born a Muslim, Catholic, Jehovah's Witness or any other religion, of course, that is something imposed by the parents and only when children are old enough do they get to decide for themselves whether they want religion to be part of their lives.
So well done to Michael Gove, I say, for introducing a policy where ethnicity, religious faith and sexual orientation play no part in the adoption process - as an adopted child himself, I suspect he has a better feel for the subject than most.
Fury as Muslim girl adopted by lesbians
By Nicholas Hellen - The Sunday Times
A MUSLIM family of Somali origin have protested after social services chose a white lesbian couple to adopt their three-year-old daughter.
They say offers from four members of their extended family to care for the girl were rejected. Relatives want the child to be brought up by a family who share their religious and ethnic background.
The dispute represents a test of the coalition’s policy of encouraging adopters regardless of ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. It was introduced three years ago by Michael Gove, the education secretary, who said such barriers denied children a loving home. At the time it took black children 50% longer to be placed for adoption than other ethnic groups.
Ibrahim, a family member, said: “Four blood relatives on the mother’s side were willing to adopt.” Yet he claimed the mother, who along with the child cannot be named for legal reasons, received a letter from social services saying there are “no Muslim adopters available at all”.
The family has enlisted the help of the Victoria Climbié Foundation, which campaigns for better child protection. Mor Dioum, its director, said:“The family wish that their religious and cultural values are taken into consideration when making such an important decision. They are saying that this is in the best welfare of the child.”
While Dioum said none of the three main monotheistic faiths welcomed homosexuality, he insisted: “The family’s issue in this case is not about the sexual orientation of these two individuals.”
The mother, who has suffered mental health problems, has already had her two older daughters taken into care. Harrow council in northwest London wrote to her saying adoptive parents had been selected and she should say goodbye to the girl at a meeting last Wednesday.
But when about 50 people staged a protest outside Harrow civic centre, Dioum persuaded the council to postpone the mother’s farewell meeting. The council then offered to review the case and asked the family to submit the names of alternative adopters by 4pm on Friday.
Councillor Susan Hall, leader of Harrow council, said: “Clearly there is always an ideal that a child could be matched with parents from a similar background and heritage. But the reality is that the ultimate choice is governed by the kind of adoptive parents who are available.”
Hall also said that “dragging out” the process did not help the child, adding: “The most important thing is that the child goes to a loving and supportive home and to people we believe, on the basis of thorough assessment, are best suited to look after them.”
Coram, a children’s charity and voluntary adoption agency that finds adoptive families for Harrow, said: “None of the prospective adopters of the same religion who were approached felt they would be a suitable match for this child.
“When it is not possible to match a child with families from the same religious and ethnic background, a balance must be struck between managing the uncertainty for the child of further delay . . . and casting the net more widely.”
According to the Adoption Register, same-sex couples are matched with children because they are particularly willing to consider adopting older children.
Ibrahim claimed the mother had not been properly informed about the imminent adoption and relatives not told why their bids had failed.
“If the council wants the community to come forward as adopters, that sort of behaviour is a big thing,” he said. Dioum said: “The Somali community have for the first time come out because they believe this case has a wider importance. We don’t believe any community is beyond reach.”
Coalition reforms helped spark a rise in adoptions to almost 4,000 — a 21-year high — in the year to last March, but there are still about 6,000 children on waiting lists. It takes an average of two years and seven months for a child to be adopted from the time when they go into care.
Fury as Muslim girl adopted by lesbians
By Nicholas Hellen - The Sunday Times
A MUSLIM family of Somali origin have protested after social services chose a white lesbian couple to adopt their three-year-old daughter.
They say offers from four members of their extended family to care for the girl were rejected. Relatives want the child to be brought up by a family who share their religious and ethnic background.
The dispute represents a test of the coalition’s policy of encouraging adopters regardless of ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. It was introduced three years ago by Michael Gove, the education secretary, who said such barriers denied children a loving home. At the time it took black children 50% longer to be placed for adoption than other ethnic groups.
Ibrahim, a family member, said: “Four blood relatives on the mother’s side were willing to adopt.” Yet he claimed the mother, who along with the child cannot be named for legal reasons, received a letter from social services saying there are “no Muslim adopters available at all”.
The family has enlisted the help of the Victoria Climbié Foundation, which campaigns for better child protection. Mor Dioum, its director, said:“The family wish that their religious and cultural values are taken into consideration when making such an important decision. They are saying that this is in the best welfare of the child.”
While Dioum said none of the three main monotheistic faiths welcomed homosexuality, he insisted: “The family’s issue in this case is not about the sexual orientation of these two individuals.”
The mother, who has suffered mental health problems, has already had her two older daughters taken into care. Harrow council in northwest London wrote to her saying adoptive parents had been selected and she should say goodbye to the girl at a meeting last Wednesday.
But when about 50 people staged a protest outside Harrow civic centre, Dioum persuaded the council to postpone the mother’s farewell meeting. The council then offered to review the case and asked the family to submit the names of alternative adopters by 4pm on Friday.
Councillor Susan Hall, leader of Harrow council, said: “Clearly there is always an ideal that a child could be matched with parents from a similar background and heritage. But the reality is that the ultimate choice is governed by the kind of adoptive parents who are available.”
Hall also said that “dragging out” the process did not help the child, adding: “The most important thing is that the child goes to a loving and supportive home and to people we believe, on the basis of thorough assessment, are best suited to look after them.”
Coram, a children’s charity and voluntary adoption agency that finds adoptive families for Harrow, said: “None of the prospective adopters of the same religion who were approached felt they would be a suitable match for this child.
“When it is not possible to match a child with families from the same religious and ethnic background, a balance must be struck between managing the uncertainty for the child of further delay . . . and casting the net more widely.”
According to the Adoption Register, same-sex couples are matched with children because they are particularly willing to consider adopting older children.
Ibrahim claimed the mother had not been properly informed about the imminent adoption and relatives not told why their bids had failed.
“If the council wants the community to come forward as adopters, that sort of behaviour is a big thing,” he said. Dioum said: “The Somali community have for the first time come out because they believe this case has a wider importance. We don’t believe any community is beyond reach.”
Coalition reforms helped spark a rise in adoptions to almost 4,000 — a 21-year high — in the year to last March, but there are still about 6,000 children on waiting lists. It takes an average of two years and seven months for a child to be adopted from the time when they go into care.
