About DS drinking milk

[darwinsbabe]

I have a DS who is almost 3.

My DH drinks water all the time and we encourage my son to do the same but he always refuses and asks for milk instead. Even with the lure of diluting juice he will opt for milk. My DH thinks he drinks too much milk and not enough water and gets worked up about it. I'm just glad he's drinking and it's something healthy.

Aibu to tell my husband to calm down and continue to let my DS drink milk?

Good question, yuk

I'm not sure sorry - I have almond milk but I sympathise as I'm not mad keen on soy, although I can't really taste it in hot porridge or tea. There's coconut milk but I'm not keen on that either!

you're doing exactly what I said people in the UK do, and anthropomorphising them

I am not anthropomorphising them at all, because they are mammals just like us, I'm not superimposing that on them, they are! and they do form bonds with their young! again that is not superimposing human characteristics on them, it is correct for their biology

Some humans reject their newborns too, what's your point?

Dairy farming is cruel, any enforced wetnursing of any kind is cruel. Your sister chose to milk share, that's not comparible. What is more comparable is "mammy" slaves forced to leave their babies to wet nurse white babies.

Okey dokey. On this we'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm fine with eating meat and dairy as long as the animals are looked after better than they would have been treated in the wild, with using working animals to provide services for humans etc. and I don't think that comparing milking a cow with forcing a slave to wetnurse another's child is a fair comparison, or suggests that there could be any common ground in our standpoints.

they do form bonds with their young

My point is that naturally, it would be completely normal for a cow to be repeatedly in calf, for a cow to lose a fair proportion of those calves either through disease or abandonment. Just as it was for humans before modern medicine.

Personally, I don't think that life for a well cared for dairy cow is worse than the life of a wild bison cow.

Seriously, choc, "well cared for dairy cow" is an oxymoron! The milk happens because we take their calves away. The noise they make is - well, it's awful. They suffer. Just because something doesn't speak our language doesn't mean they aren't expressing something.

Those of you saying cows are being forced to produce triple the amount... is there milk out there that's a bit like buying 'free range eggs' ? free range eggs doesn't mean shit FWIW

Seriously I want to know this. Obviously there's a huge disagreement here and I've not read the full thread. But I'm genuinely interested in what the alternative is. I have an allergy to nuts so can't have almond milk and I also hate soya milk... what alternative is there? Am I just to never have milk again?! if you kept one cow and never separated it from it's calf and hand milked off a small amount, just enough for your family, IMO that would be okay (or a goat!)
But once you take it to commercial levels, even on a small scale, to be viable - no!

Oat milk? but you don't need to replace cows milk with plant milk, you don't need any milk. You can get all the nutrients from non milk (of any kind) sources.

I don't. I drink a mix of cows and other milks. I'm just not in denial about what it is I'm doing!

oh right, so because nature can sometimes be cruel it's okay to enslave sentient creatures and force them to lactate for us! to LACTATE! what we instinctively do for our own offspring! You really don't think other mamals have any of the same sort of emotional drives in relation to lactation that we do?

Tbh, I do consume milk (I used to be dairy free. But for MH related reasons I don't think that having a restrictive diet is good for me. At least not currently).

Anyhow. Milk isn't a staple food like... vegetables are, imo. I see it a bit like I may see... Fruit juice. Or chocolate. I like it and I wouldn't want to go without it (because pizza! And ricotta lasagne). But I don't have it everyday...

However, morally...

Idk. I personally have no moral objections to the slaughter (or "murder" according to some) of animals. I grew up fishing, I like hunting. My grandmother usedto have rabbits and chicken. And I like meat...
But for some weird reason dairy does seem somewhat... wrong to me.

Maybe it's because I'm a mother (I never really thought about it before I had DD, tbh). But the whole process and treatement of dairy cows just seems messed up and one of the most unnatural things ever.

I completely agree with you FeedWithTheSharks

I've fished, skinned rabbits, plucked ducks and hens… a quick death without waste after a life where they can behave as they would naturally I am okay with

Dairy IMO is far more unethical than meat.
Firstly, Dairy is not "no kill" anyway, the males are slaughtered so any objection to meat applies to dairy

and then there's the motherhood/nursing aspect. Is nothing sacred? If anything should be it's nursing! Mammals with their young: anyone who doesn't think they feel what we feel is in total denial IMO. All of the feelings we have about loving and wanting to nourish our own young are just animal instincts so it's BS to say that you can't apply human standards. We're just mammals too! we have those same feelings for biological reasons!

TinselTwins

Yes!! exactly. It's the nursing aspect. And the aspect of impregnating them again and again, creating new "maternal, instinctual bonds" to just shatter them again.

It hit me so much when I nursed DD. (I had actually worked on a farm during school vacation when I was a teenager and never thought twice about hooking up a cow to a milk machine).

And I was like... fucking hell. I mean, sure, it's an animal. But animals do have maternal instincts.

BUT sometimes I just need a cheesy pizza or lasagne or Idk. But if they ever manage to produce fake dairy... (Yep, I'm probably hypocritical. But one part for me is the aspect that pretty much every "comfort food" of mine contains dairy/cheese. And that I currently can't restrict my diet...)

BUT sometimes I just need a cheesy pizza or lasagne or Idk. But if they ever manage to produce fake dairy…

for me it's real butter that I crave and can't substitute

You can make a decent cheesy sauce for lasagne using soaked cashews, vinegar and nutritional yeast, it's not exactly the same but is comforting. Real cheese isn't my thing nearly as much as real butter is though which is probably why i'm fine with vegan lasagne and pizza, but damn nothing hits the spot like butter!

Ah, butter I just use nut butters (or the neutral coconut fat).

Idk... I don't want cheesy sauce. I want parmesan, ricotta, curds...
And (not for the lasagne) gorgonzola, feta, Schabziger, Vacherin and Gruyère... (as you see. Cheese is "my" thing...)

Also, other animals kill each other for meat, but none milk each other!

some creatures do enslave others like paracites and cuckoos, but milking seems off limits for even the grossest creatures… except us!

Ah, butter I just use nut butters (or the neutral coconut fat).

Idk... I don't want cheesy sauce. I want parmesan, ricotta, curds…

I get that because that's how I feel about butter, I like nut butters but not in place of real butter, I don't want butter-ey spread. I want butter.

Yes, sounds like butter is to you what cheese is to me...

It's kind of weird how crazy food can make us/how we respond to it, isn't it? I have a friend that feels similarly about chocolate, for example.

“have you ever used a breastpump?”

Yes, loads of times. I don’t know what point you are trying to make TinselTwins. Pumping milk doesn’t hurt.

“Veganism is more mainstream. I think because there are so many dairy alternatives”

I agree, although I have yet to taste a decent alternative for cheese. There are loads of really tasty meat alternatives as well.

"other animals kill each other for meat, but none milk each other!"

That's because they don't have the hands, the technology, or the brains to actually milk other animals. But give them milk in a cup and many species of animals drink up cow's milk. Is it news to you that cats and dogs love it, for example?

It isn't very good for cats though.

But give them milk in a cup and many species of animals drink up cow's milk. Is it news to you that cats and dogs love it, for example?

It's really bad for them and they don't do it in "nature", the whole cats drinking milk thing came from agriculture. i.e. an unnatural environment, when humans encouraged cats as pest control

That's because they don't have the hands, the technology, or the brains to actually milk other animals

animals use all sorts of clever tools to access improbable food sources. They use gravity and rocks to get into rock hard nuts, they dig up tubers, they set elaborate traps.. they don't milk other animals though because it's unnatural and a line that only humans cross

"so because nature can sometimes be cruel it's okay to enslave sentient creatures and force them to lactate for us! to LACTATE!"

This is hilarious

LACTATE! LACTATE, I SAY!!!

it's really not. We shouldn't force other animals to gestate or lactate

"They use gravity and rocks to get into rock hard nuts, they dig up tubers, they set elaborate traps.. they don't milk other animals though because it's unnatural and a line that only humans cross"

Cats don't milk cows because it's unnatural? What, because if they had no moral objections they would have clawed cows' teats and hope to get milk out? Except that they drink milk & eat cheese wherever they find it, of course, so clearly they don't give a hot damn about your moral objections.

Is there a name for this planet you are from, where animals turn down food they would otherwise have access to because it is... unnatural?

Milk is never lying around in the wild.

It's just not a food source except for the suckling infant of that species.