When happy meals don't make children happy

The current mixed-method study asks why non-vegetarian children and vegetarian children with either vegetarian or non-vegetarian parents abstain from eating meat as well as how these children judge individuals who do eat meat. A qualitative interview elicits responses from both vegetarian and non-vegetarian children with regard to a type of meat they do not eat together with their reasons for not doing so. A quantitative interview asks children to judge four individuals who eat meat: a morally committed vegetarian, a personally committed vegetarian, an uncommitted individual and the participating child him/herself. Results from the qualitative interview indicate that vegetarian children with non-vegetarian parents and vegetarian children with vegetarian parents are likely to cite moral reasons for not eating meat, whereas non-vegetarian children with meat-eating parents are likely to cite personal reasons for (occasionally) not eating meat. Many vegetarian children with vegetarian parents also reference their parents or religious leaders when justifying their vegetarian diet, suggesting that these children abstain from eating meat because an authority figure stipulates this behavior and not because they are concerned about animal suffering. Results from the quantitative interview indicate that children's judgments of meat-eating depend on two factors. First, they depend on whether or not an individual made a commitment to avoid eating meat. Second, they depend on whether this commitment was made for moral or personal reason.