The Kindness Myth

You probably don’t see as much of my wife Lisa now that she’s a full-time mum, but if you follow her on social you’ll see that she regularly posts about the challenges of vegan parenting. We decided to homeschool our daughter because animal agriculture completely permeates early years education and we were not prepared to expose Awen to it until she’s able to defend herself against the propaganda.

People challenge me on using that word. But as Lisa tells friends and family members as she politely refuses children’s books about farms and farmed animals: “we don’t read those stories to Awen because all the animals are killed at the end, but the books miss that bit out.”

One of the worst cases we’ve seen recently is ‘Maisy Mouse’s Big Book of Kindness’ an innocuously-titled picture book which Lisa picked up from the library this week (see photo above). In the book, Maisy carries out random acts of kindness, including caring for all sorts of animals as she pulls her boots on to feed the chickens, cows and pigs. Two pages later, she serves up their dead bodies on the grill to feed her hungry animal friends.

This is the level of gaslighting which we’re up against. Children are shown happy farmers caring for animals on one page and seemingly-unrelated steak and sausages on the next. This is why it is so hard to turn someone vegan and even harder to keep someone vegan – we’ve been exposed to this narrative since before we could even talk.

A young girl in the supermarket once asked what vegan meant (I was wearing my Vegan Tribe hoodie). I told her that it was someone who didn’t think we should hurt or kill animals. Explain it that way, and every young child would say they were vegan. We can’t bring about systemic change without educating children at the youngest possible age, before ‘Old McDonald’ gets his grip on them. It has to be a major part of the plan, so ask if it can be part of yours.