Margit arrived from Germany in 2004 to work as a midwife in Andalusia. There she met her current partner, with whom she had Laura, a girl they are raising to respect animals. Now she wants to meet and share experiences with other parents who are trying to develop empathy towards non-human animals. All members of the family are vegan, and Margit, her husband, and her daughter all volunteer at the sanctuary El Hogar de Luci (Luci's Home).
Can you tell us about your family?
Nuestra hija tiene 4 años y medio ahora. Durante su primer año éramos carnívoros todavía, pero a ella, después de la lactancia, la alimentábamos sin carne o lácteos de origen de vaca – por motivos de salud. Cuando ella tenía dos años me hice vegetariana, pero ella recibió carne de vez en cuando por parte de otros miembros de la familia. Al principio de su tercer año nos hicimos veganos finalmente y desde entonces ella también lo es. Es decir, yo necesitaba apartarme del vegetarianismo y su padre pasaba directamente de la carne al rechazo absoluto de esta. Hoy somos veganos por el respeto de los animales no-humanos y el rechazo del especismo.
How do you put anti-speciesism into practice in your daily habits?
We've lived with cats for many years. They're part of the family; we share the house and try to understand how they communicate their needs. The cats are also vegan, which has been a significant and very fulfilling change in our lives. Because of their partial dependence on us, they have a status similar to children—in our case, as older siblings to our human daughter. This means, for example, that when a cat sleeps on a sofa, it's THEIR sofa, and we sit somewhere else, sometimes even on the floor when everyone else is occupied. We teach our daughter about their needs and ways of communicating. For example, their need to always have an escape route and how they signal their displeasure. Our daughter sometimes wants to "experiment," and understandably, she gets a hiss or a scratch. In these cases, when she comes crying and complaining, I first go to the cat to tell it that it did the right thing and that its behavior was justified, and only then to my daughter to comfort her and explain again how to respect her siblings' signals and needs.
Other examples?
At home, we always try to catch any unwanted non-human animals, like wasps, or those that can't find their way out, such as flies and moths, and release them outside in the garden. We have a small device that makes this easier, and our daughter loves learning how to use it. When we see an insect that has fallen into a pool, we rescue it. I always show her how beautiful and fascinating they all are. That they all have offspring and enjoy life. When we're in the car and I see an animal by the side of the road, I stop whenever possible to check if it's still alive, if we can save it, and if it's already dead, we move it further away from the road into a field so that scavengers aren't endangered by passing cars.
When I see her "playing" with an ant outside, I explain its fragility to her, and when she doesn't respect it, she's grounded in her room. She's forbidden from chasing pigeons in parks, etc.
In other words, do you educate with restrictions, prohibitions, punishments, etc.?
I'd almost say "of course." When a non-human animal is involved in a conflict with a child, and you see them both as children, as two individuals with their own strengths and limitations, things become very simple. Just as you can get involved in conflicts between children, you can also get involved in interspecies conflicts. Now, with my current awareness, I'm struck by what happens in families with "pets." These "companion" animals have to adapt to the arrival of a child, but the child doesn't have to adapt to living with an animal; the animal is always the favorite. And that's where the ever-widening path of speciesism begins.
I don't see anything wrong with raising children in a way that starts with a clear "no," like not chasing pigeons, and then explains why, knowing it will take time for them to understand. But in the meantime, we can't allow bad behavior, right? I don't really care if they understand a rule I set or not; it's the same as not letting them cross a road without holding hands. They don't understand traffic and its dangers, but they understand my instructions and my appropriate reaction when they act contrary to them.
Do you follow any particular concept or theory in your approach to education?
No. Perhaps the only thing is that I believe in the importance of setting an example. I don't force her to act in a way that I don't live by. The rest is more intuitive.
But I believe that anti-speciesism, the defense of animal rights, should not be conflated with other concepts, neither in the strategic field where it always risks being mixed up with political concepts like left-wing or anti-fascist ones, nor in the field of education. Anti-speciesism IS a concept, a way of living, acting, and feeling; it doesn't need a pedagogical "foundation" or "decoration" like, for example, anti-authoritarianism. It's just that we don't have much experience, we can't rely on experts, we don't have a long history, we are still individual and isolated authors. And we make mistakes, undoubtedly.
How do you see a child's ability to understand or digest the reality of the lives of non-human animals?
I see the reality of many children around the world that has nothing to do with the overprotection we practice here; children who live through violence, war, hunger, marginalization, lack of education, and so on. Children who play with garbage and see human corpses in the street every day. And we design a world of Caillou, fairies, and happy pigs on the farm in books…
Some educators say that the desire for a beautiful world is the foundation for adults to later remember happiness and try to achieve it…
Sinceramente creo que eso es un gran error para no decir una mentira y así la base para el especismo. No veo ningún sentido en no hablar de cosas que ocurren, que ve, que oye. Un niño de un soldado que se despide de su familia para un tiempo largo querrá saber de la guerra. Y la carne en el plato ES un hecho, tiene una historia. No hablar de eso es igual que mentir. La comida es algo importante en la vida social, celebramos cada fiesta con comida, es lo que reúne a la gente, sin olvidar que es vital, por qué entonces no hablar de su origen? Hay una frase, tan simple como cierta: Si no eres ni siquiera capaz de talk de alguna cosa por su atrocidad, como entonces puedes dola? Un niño puede, debe comer carne pero no es capaz de aguantar el “cuento” de donde viene? Me acuerdo de una mesa informativa de gente activa contra la caza en Alemania, a la ocasión de una feria de caza, los cazadores llamaron a la policía para que quitasen fotos de caza “porque son demasiado violentes para los niños que visitan la feria”, (!) pues la policia vino y se fue sin hacer nada, ya que solo había verdad en estas fotos.
In short, if we agree that children shouldn't be taught cruelty, then we must do everything to ensure that cruelty doesn't exist in the first place. Anything else is hypocrisy.
And in the meantime, I believe that having a positive path like a vegan lifestyle makes it possible to confront them with reality as it is. Whenever we have a way out, a solution that makes them, us, feel good and in harmony with our values and convictions.
Another solution she's experienced since she was little is visiting animal sanctuaries like Luci's Home and Wings of Heart, both in Madrid. It's a blessing that we can visit them, that we can show children what life could be like, how animals live without cages, without chains, without any purpose or reason other than to live and enjoy life. I feel very grateful and fortunate to be able to teach my daughter that.
What does this mean in everyday life?
I've told the story from the very beginning, presenting it as it is. Meat, sausages, cheese, milk. That some people eat animals and that, naturally, they kill them to do so. Their neighbors, their teachers, their friends, their grandparents—they always ask, "Does this person eat animals?" That animals live in sad and cruel circumstances and that nothing justifies killing them. That killing is wrong. And that not only do we not do it ourselves, but we also try to convince others to understand this. That we are right and the others are wrong, despite being in the minority.
Furthermore, I don't think it's necessary; it's a mistake to exclude a child from the reality of death. We were "lucky" that one of our cats died recently, and I waited until she came home from school to show her his little body, crying together, touching him and understanding his stiffness, and then burying him. And I always tell her that we will all get there someday. But there's a big difference if we die of old age or illness or accident, or if we die because someone wants our skin or our flesh or something we own just because they like it.
The question I also have is how much further beyond words I want to go. The impact of explaining it with words has its natural limit in her linguistic development. She understands something, asks again two weeks later, remembers some things, but not others. The next step would be to show her drawings, photos, videos, even reality itself. She recently asked me exactly how animals are killed in slaughterhouses. I asked her for some time to think of an answer. In the end, I decided not to show her any images (nor, of course, a real visit, since I can't stand that), but rather to play with her toys, talking to her. From being raised in cages to being transported and the way they are killed. But that's not set in stone; I can imagine that at some point I'll show her a photo or maybe something more. The reason I'm not doing it now isn't because I don't want to "shock" her – reality is reality – but even I don't have many tools to survive the great cruelty that animals experience. It seems too early to burden her with this brutal effort of getting out of the depression or blind rage that comes so easily when you see photos or videos.
How do you talk to your daughter about human crimes?
I simply do it. I talk about evil the way I talk about everything else. That there are people who do harm, who cause pain to others for pleasure, like hunters who kill non-human animals whose shots we have to hear every Thursday very close to our homes, or how some adults do it to human children or, in general, to the most vulnerable, which is why we can't leave them unattended on the street. Just as there are good people, some simply rejecting evil, others fighting against it as best they can, like when we go together to a demonstration. Whenever it comes up in conversation, I talk about what's really going on. Why, for us, the egg isn't the symbol of life as it is in their preschool at Easter, but the opposite: that they kill the siblings of the mothers of the eggs, and the mothers themselves after a miserable life. How do they get a milk cow, which is taken so seriously at their school? They steal and kill her baby as soon as it's born, causing her great pain by taking her milk, and finally killing her when she can no longer produce any more. I say it with these exact words, and you can probably tell that it affects me and that I say it with bitterness. And that's okay, because it's how I feel, and that way there's consistency between the two levels of communication, verbal and non-verbal. Sometimes she sees me crying in front of the computer. And I tell her then that I'm crying because of the things I see that have been done to animals again. Sometimes tears even come to my eyes when I'm explaining something to her, or when we see a truck transporting animals to the slaughterhouse. I don't hide them; why would I?
How do you see the different stages of childhood, and when can we talk about what happens at each stage?
Well, I see a big difference if you're talking about your own child, whom you've known since day one and who is with you 24 hours a day, or if you're talking about a group of children you don't know well and who are with you for only a few hours.
If you make a mistake with your own child, you realize it easily and quickly, and you have all the time and opportunities to correct it. As a teacher in a school setting, you only have one hour, and behind you are all the different parents with their own ideas about education, their concerns, or even their neglect and abandonment. I don't have any clear ideas, just an almost "natural" aversion to concepts like "from 3 to 6 years old a child can… and can't…", and I think we must try to overcome our "fear" of the reactions of parents or authorities when we talk about reality and the truth.
In my own daughter's education, I don't see fixed stages. I simply observe her and decide at each moment the level I think she'll understand. Besides, she also tells me what she can or wants to hear; it's easy to see in her reaction to my "telling." Sometimes, before I despair because she "still" doesn't know or understand something, I have to remind myself of her age. Sometimes I'm amazed by her memory and her attention to detail. One of her phrases that I'll never forget is, "When I have a daughter, I'll name her Luci, like Luci's Home, because that's where the animals live." When, not where.
Education isn't something you design on a blackboard; it's a mutual process. I learn something new every day, something that's right and wrong. And I think that's very individual; it doesn't just depend on the child's age, but also on the parents' abilities and experiences.
Is it difficult to feed a child a vegan diet?
It took me a while to learn to cook in general, even before I became vegan, to make something fresh every day, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. But once I grasped the basics, it wasn't difficult at all. When traveling, it's not always the healthiest option for us—a plate of fries and a tomato—but we never go hungry, and it's perfectly fine not to eat 100% perfectly every day. I've always thought we're too easily impressed by "experts" who treat everything like a science that only they understand (and who are well paid for it). You don't need to study nutritional tables from top to bottom or become a dietician. It's very useful to remember from time to time that the world is big, that all the rules we have here correspond to the local market and not necessarily to absolute truth. This is very clear when talking about cow's milk and its "importance" for humans. With a little common sense, we can live very well.
A question I'm often asked is whether I would let her "try" meat, eggs, or dairy when she asks for it. I'm not entirely sure, but in principle, the answer is no. No, because veganism isn't just one option among others, it's not an individual decision, but a necessity and the only ethical way to eat. She had a transition period, like cats, when there were still exceptions like the chocolate her grandmother used to send, but not anymore. So, if she wants to try it, she'll have to do it on her own, outside the house, organizing it herself, and preferably without telling me… Because, of course, what I can do is live by my values; what she does is her decision, and as she gets older, her options will expand.