Is it vegan to have children?

[EquALLity]

But that isn't the situation with depression. Sometimes medication X works, while sometimes medication Y works, and sometimes medication Z works.

That's why I said they should need to be cleared by multiple therapists, and have tried all of the established treatment AND changed lifestyle (which is a huge component too). Try X, Y, Z, and A, B C too and figure out what it is in their lives that's troubling them and address that, and if that still doesn't work for some of them -- they've reached the end of evidence based treatment -- there's no reason to expect them to try all of the woo or wait ten years for a miracle.

Different solutions work for different people. There isn't really a clear cut solution like there is with these terminal illnesses.

There may be some people for whom none of the available solutions work. Maybe there aren't, but we have to be open to the possibility.

But like I said, you can't try everything. There's always going to be another therapist, and there are many different medicines and combos of medicines you can use.

Since psychology is such a soft science, as you point out so much, I just don't think we should take that kind of a risk.

[brimstoneSalad]

But like I said, you can't try everything. There's always going to be another therapist, and there are many different medicines and combos of medicines you can use.

There will be fringe things. They CAN try all mainstream recognized treatments.
If you are suffering from a physically painful degenerative disease, there will always be other medicines and alternative treatments too: you will never try everything. Are you never allowed to give up and find peace? Do you have to suffer and toil your entire life after a cure which may never be found?

Since psychology is such a soft science, as you point out so much, I just don't think we should take that kind of a risk.

You don't seem to understand there there's a harm to them living and waiting too. Some people suffer in agony because of depression.
There's a risk of NOT finding a cure, and of suffering all of that time with no reward of a happy life at the end. And because it's a softer science, that risk is much higher too. The softness of the field cuts both ways.

At a certain point, we have to respect that it's reasonable to want to die, using a rational cost/benefit analysis based on the low probability of ever being happy after trying all mainstream therapy and changing lifestyle.

[EquALLity]

But like I said, you can't try everything. There's always going to be another therapist, and there are many different medicines and combos of medicines you can use.

There will be fringe things. They CAN try all mainstream recognized treatments.
If you are suffering from a physically painful degenerative disease, there will always be other medicines and alternative treatments too: you will never try everything. Are you never allowed to give up and find peace? Do you have to suffer and toil your entire life after a cure which may never be found?

Since psychology is such a soft science, as you point out so much, I just don't think we should take that kind of a risk.

You don't seem to understand there there's a harm to them living and waiting too. Some people suffer in agony because of depression.
There's a risk of NOT finding a cure, and of suffering all of that time with no reward of a happy life at the end. And because it's a softer science, that risk is much higher too. The softness of the field cuts both ways.

At a certain point, we have to respect that it's reasonable to want to die, using a rational cost/benefit analysis based on the low probability of ever being happy after trying all mainstream therapy and changing lifestyle.

Agh... I guess it should be legal, in very specific cases and with very strict regulations.
I really don't like it though.

[brimstoneSalad]

Agh... I guess it should be legal, in very specific cases and with very strict regulations.

Also keep in mind that if it were illegal, people would still do it themselves, but then without the proper oversight and without trying all of the recognized therapies available first. Much like abortion, having it legal would probably not increase the number of suicides, and may even reduce them through greater education of the alternatives.

[PrincessPeach]

Vegan babies are technically born vegetarians if mom decides to breast feed; babies can't even see when they are born they just smell for their mothers milk! Im not interested in critiquing the depressing reasoning behind antinatalist's but I understand the main point. Ive done my research and come to find out the more intelligent a woman is the more likely she is to not have kids. In fact the percent of women not having children continues to go up every year.. I don't understand the fearfulness of the unknown either "what if my child has depression" ... Then you deal with it when it comes not worry about things that aren't even possible, yet. I feel now that having a child people take me and my vegan life style more seriously because I have living proof that veganism is working and I always get to be the parent with the smartest child! ;-D Established vegan couples should either adopt or have their own if they want, I feel it's good to encourage vegans to have kids since it seems some people are advising otherwise... I feel like cough :freelee: doesn't realize they're trying to depopulate vegans... Or are they?

[brimstoneSalad]

Mother's breast milk is vegan, since it is given willingly. No such consent can really be obtained from other species; cows come to be milked, but that's because it hurts not to, it doesn't mean they want you taking away their children to become veal, and taking their milk for humans.

The only argument that could be made that babies are not vegan is that veganism is a moral choice, and babies don't have the knowledge to make that choice. This would be true regardless of what they eat. But human breast milk is no kind of violation of vegan ethics, and vegan mothers should breastfeed their babies if they want to and can (have time and ability, etc.).

[PrincessPeach]

Mother's breast milk is vegan, since it is given willingly. No such consent can really be obtained from other species; cows come to be milked, but that's because it hurts not to, it doesn't mean they want you taking away their children to become veal, and taking their milk for humans.

The only argument that could be made that babies are not vegan is that veganism is a moral choice, and babies don't have the knowledge to make that choice. This would be true regardless of what they eat. But human breast milk is no kind of violation of vegan ethics, and vegan mothers should breastfeed their babies if they want to and can (have time and ability, etc.).

Yes a mother gives her milk willingly but the point I'm trying to make is that humans are born vegetarians. Saying that human breast milk is vegan isn't true because we aren't born vegan we are born vegetarian. We are born blind and the only thing a newborn baby can do is nurse. The first year of a humans life should strictly be human breast milk. As humans we forget this and we need not forget that we are all born vegetarians, born to drink the milk of our own species and to be weaned from our mothers milk. All Lactating mammals produce a hormone called "oxytocin" (they same hormone that is released when humans hug or have an orgasm) this hormone makes it pleasurable for the mom to nurse so she will continue to nurse her child and it strengthens the bond between mother and child... New researcher says that mothers produce milk with dna structures that favor the child's gender. A mothers milk is very special and we need to remember if we have to "wean" our babies from our own mothers milk then we need to "wean" the rest of the population from the cow and goat milk.

[PrincessPeach]

Oh and lactating mammals will nurse abandoned babies so saying that humans are the only ones that willfully give up their milk is inncorrect.

[brimstoneSalad]

Yes a mother gives her milk willingly but the point I'm trying to make is that humans are born vegetarians.

Humans aren't born anything in particular: they eat whatever their parents give them in liquid form with a nipple. You could liquify meat and mix it with milk and probably get an infant to drink it. That would make that particular infant a meat eater.

Saying that human breast milk is vegan isn't true because we aren't born vegan we are born vegetarian.

That's ridiculous. Saying Breast milk isn't vegan is also dangerous. Going around claiming that risks vegan mothers choosing not to breastfeed because they're worried about it being non-vegan. And maybe avoiding formula too. Is that what you're aiming for? If so, keep at it: you're putting vegan babies at risk if their parents are naive enough to believe you.

This is a serious issue for a lot of vegan mothers who are confused about it, so fuck you for confusing them further and putting babies' health and lives at risk:
http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-pos ... Milk-Vegan

This fear mongering about breast milk being non-vegan is comparable in insidiousness to anti-vaxx propaganda.

There's nothing non-vegan about human breast milk, willingly given, from a vegan mother.


Your argument apparently: "Babies are vegetarian therefore the thing that they eat is vegetarian and not vegan"

So if vegetarians eat broccoli, that means broccoli is vegetarian, not vegan?
If a meat-eater happens to eat broccoli, that makes the broccoli meat?

That's Bullshit.

We call a food vegan when it doesn't result in unnecessary animal suffering; broadly, most plant foods, but breast milk and willingly given human excretion (even semen; yes if it's from a vegan, that's a question a lot of people ask,) are vegan.

This doesn't make the person eating them exclusively an ideologically vegan (not even adults), but infants can be called dietary vegans due to eating breast milk (and so can anybody who doesn't non-vegan products for any reason). They'll learn the philosophy later in life, then can make the choice for themselves.

The first year of a humans life should strictly be human breast milk.

Or formula. Since there is no 100% vegan formula available (due to D3), if a child needs to eat formula, then formula is vegan because it's not possible or practicable to do otherwise.

There's a very good argument to be made that breast milk from non-vegan mothers is not vegan, because they need to eat more calories (and that probably means more calories of non-vegan foods, being converted into the milk) in order to produce the breast milk (using others' breast milk is not necessary if the mother can't make her own, formula is fine).

A mothers milk is very special and we need to remember if we have to "wean" our babies from our own mothers milk then we need to "wean" the rest of the population from the cow and goat milk.

There's a lot of pseudoscience in that. People can pretty easily switch to a plant milk directly. The effects of opioids etc. in milk are based on weak evidence.

Oh and lactating mammals will nurse abandoned babies so saying that humans are the only ones that willfully give up their milk is inncorrect.

If an animal adopts another baby, they can. You're misrepresenting what I said, which was this:

No such consent can really be obtained from other species; cows come to be milked, but that's because it hurts not to, it doesn't mean they want you taking away their children to become veal, and taking their milk for humans.

Do you think admitting human breast milk is vegan would automatically make all cow milk vegan, when it's based on an industry harming them, tearing their babies away for veal, and conditioning them to be milked in large amounts?

If a cow chose to adopt a human child, that would probably be fine -- that would be a clear action the cow chose to take of its own volition. Saying that taking a cow's milk is consented to by the cow is like saying a slave consents to being a slave because that's all he or she has ever known and hasn't rebelled against it (that was a common pro-slavery argument in the slavery era).

[vegan81vzla]

I believe that, in the end, is everyone choice, and that it is a topic unrelated to veganism.