No Kids, No Meat
There is one thing about me that shocks some people almost as much as my being childfree. There is one other thing that marks me as “other,” as “them” in “us against them.” There is one other thing that elicits that response of complete incomprehension, that blank stare, and that almost moral outrage.
I don’t eat meat.
Officially, I am a generally pesco-lacto-ovo-vegetarian, meaning I eat fish, milk, and egg products. On occasion (i.e., holidays with my carnivorous family), I eat free range white meat. I have no strong desire to eat meat at all, but, out of politeness to my family, who would feel cheated if Thanksgiving were celebrated with Tofurkey instead of turkey, I acquiesce, provided the meat is free range and organic. In actuality, this makes me a flexitarian, but since relatively few people are familiar with the term and, for the sake of convenience and simplicity, I refer to myself as a pesco-vegetarian—fish, but no meat.
I live in a part of the country where barbeque is one of the five major food groups and where “free range” means open hunting grounds. So when I mention that I don’t eat meat, I get a reaction that suggests I may just as well have said I was an alien from Alpha Centauri with a tail and a third arm growing out of my back. Recently at work, a co-worker was making recommendations for places to go for lunch. She started raving about a hamburger joint and then stopped suddenly and said, “Oh, I keep forgetting—you don’t eat meat. We’ve never had one of those before.”
One of those? She didn’t mean it offensively, and I took no offense. At least I’m the second childfree they’ve hired. The first has been there for thirty years, so they have grown accustomed to childfreedom—my childfree co-worker makes no secret of the fact that not having children was by deliberate choice, not unfortunate chance.
Statistically speaking, the female childfree and the meat-free represent a similar percentage of the American population, and childfree men represent an even greater percentage. According to a December 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control, in 2002, 6.2% of women in the U.S. aged 15 to 44 (“women of childbearing age”) were “voluntarily childless” (i.e., childfree), and 22% of men in the U.S. aged 40 to 44 had not fathered any children. A 2006 poll conducted by Harris Interactive for the Vegetarian Resource Group, found that approximately 7% of U.S. adults do not eat meat.
While my personal experience would lead me to conclude that vegetarians and non-meat eaters enjoy greater social acceptance than the childfree, I can’t help but notice the similarity in the reactions people have to my eating habits and my reproductive choices. My mention that I don’t eat meat has been met with puzzled looks and even more puzzled questions—“Ever?”—as if I actually do eat meat but only in the evening or only when it’s grilled or only when the animals do a song and dance routine before I consume them. It reminds me of the “you must mean something else” response to my childfreedom—that I actually do want kids when I meet the “right” man or when I “get older.”
When I say I don’t eat meat, friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers are either intrigued or shocked enough to ask, “why not?” Yet not once have I ever asked a co-worker at the office potluck why he is eating ham or a shopper in line at the grocery store why she is buying ground beef. Likewise, many of the childed and childed-to-be see fit to ask why I do not want children, while I wouldn’t think to ask someone why he or she does want children. My refusal to ask this type of question stems not from my own opinions on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of personal choices, whether those choices have to do with eating habits or reproduction, but from the fact that these are personal choices.
My choice may not be the norm, but it is my choice for my life that I do not impose on anyone else. With time, my friends and acquaintances have become accustomed to my choice to abstain from meat, though some of them still think it is odd. Time has not, unfortunately, caused my acquaintances to become accustomed to my choice to be childfree. It continues to be incomprehensible and to set me apart. Why the difference? Why are my choices regarding what comes out of my body of so much greater concern to others than my choices regarding what goes into it?
Copyright Julie Nisley. Published 1 July 2009 in Editorials.
Reader comments
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Great article. It boggles me why others try to tell us what to do with our bodies (i.e., what to eat, major permanent life decisions like having a child) without hesitation. In contrast, we could care less to meddle in others’ decisions of a similar caliber. I am not a vegetarian myself, but watch what I eat very closely and monitor my nutrition intake. I am troubled by the reactions that I get when I turn down a dessert or a fried meal. “But you’re thin as a rail, you need to eat more.” It mirrors the “But you’d make a good mom, so you need to have kids” comment.
Eat meat three meals a day, have a whole vanload of kids, but please, just leave us alone!
permalink — 6 July 2009, 08:56
Great article, thanks for posting it. I’m a childfree vegetarian as well and have gotten my share of odd looks and questions. I told my parents early that my husband and I weren’t having children and they were very accepting and hardly asked any questions. Strangely when I became a vegetarian, they were constantly confused at the beginning and asked tons of questions. I’m not sure why they were so comfortable with my childfree decision and not with my vegetarianism. I still get a lot of questions from strangers though.
permalink — 30 July 2009, 15:24