A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org


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Reframing Motherhood as an Ethic of Collective Care

From Dr. Azadeh-Sobout, Mothers Against Dairy
May 2023

The tedious and physically draining task of expressing so much milk prompted me to think of non-human mothers while asking certain questions: Whose ovaries made the eggs we eat? Why do we consume these ovulations? Whose breast made the milk we drink? Why do we consume the breast milk intended for babies of another species? Whose womb bore the baby to be slaughtered for flesh? Why do we exploit, torment and destroy the bodies of others when we have no biological requirement to consume them?

vegan mother

I was born in Iran. Throughout my childhood and adult years, my father was a significant influence and through him I became well acquainted with the philosophy and practice of vegetarianism. As a Muslim, I had also become attuned to how our faith systems are embedded in the ways we acknowledge, honour and respect our relationship with nature and the universe. In Islamic tradition, relationship to the material world is not one of possession but trust. We as humans are being entrusted with the World. It is a relationship of trustee, not of ownership, and hence our obligation is the pursuit of justice at its core.

After being a vegetarian for 5 years myself, I had gradually started taking conscious steps toward adopting a vegan lifestyle before our first son was born in 2020. A few months prior to his birth, I joined the largest global vegan parenting community on Facebook to learn from other parents’ experiences in raising vegan families. Becoming a mother during the global coronavirus pandemic, while the world was experiencing devastating socio-economic disruption as well as public health and existential crises, I came to think about radical visions of motherhood.

Preparing to be a mother during a time of so much planetary suffering and fear provided an opportunity for me to rethink received forms of knowing: knowing how to live, how to love, how to relate to others and our planet, how to create family, how to mother. It also led me to want to reclaim motherhood from oppressive, patriarchal systems and influences, and to consciously embody mothering as a liberatory force.

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