How We Teach Children a Separate Morality for Food Animals

[Carolyn Bailey]

How We Teach Children a Separate Morality for Food Animals

Written by Free From Harm Staff Writers

In an eye-opening new research paper called The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood, University of Bristol researchers Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole explore how we, as a society, teach our children a separate morality for food animals that intercepts a child’s natural tendency to protect and empathize with all animals. As the paper points out, when we explain to children for the first time where meat comes from, their first reaction is often revulsion. Parents confront this moral quandary by explaining to children why farm animals have a different role in our lives than other animals.

These family traditions, along with current pop culture and food advertising influences, “contribute to a food socialization process whereby children learn to conceptually distance the animals they eat from those with whom they have an emotional bond or for who they feel ethically responsible.” Or, in other words, children learn what animals to love and which to eat, according to accepted social norms.

 

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This revised post was published in its original form in June of 2011.

Re-published here with the kind permission of Robert Grillo and Free From Harm.