WIBTA for refusing to stop cooking bacon in my kitchen due to my teenage daughters vegan lifestyle?

A Redditor shared his experience navigating his teenage daughter’s new vegan lifestyle, which has led to some conflicts in their meat-eating household. He’s made various adjustments to support her, including buying separate cookware for vegan dishes, but now she’s requesting that the family stop cooking meat at home entirely due to discomfort around animal products. While his wife is supportive of the idea, he’s unsure if this request is reasonable. Read the full story below and decide if his stance is fair.

‘ WIBTA for refusing to stop cooking bacon in my kitchen due to my teenage daughters vegan lifestyle?’

Dad here, old fart, loves his daughter to pieces but I’m struggling to see eye to eye with my teenager and wife on this one. We’ve always been a meat eating family, we live in the rural Midwest and bacon for breakfast is pretty much a given. This year my 14 y/o daughter decided to go vegan, and I jumped onto her support team with enthusiasm. We learned how to substitute ingredients, cook new things, try new things, I adjusted our budget to include more expensive vegan substitutes for her, etc.

None of this has been a problem for me until recently. She saw me cook bacon in a pan, and then I rinsed it out to load in the dishwasher. She exploded in anger (teen years, I’m not too fussed about the anger explosion, I know she doesn’t mean it) and said that that was HER pan for vegan food. I was completely floored and said, kiddo this here is a family pan, older than you, it’s not YOUR pan.

She asked me to purchase her a pan that she can solely use for vegan food. I didn’t want her to feel weird about food, so I said sure, and ordered her a few colored ones that are only for her. The reason they’re colored is so it helps me remember that I’m not to touch them unless I’m cooking vegan.

That wasn’t good enough. Now apparently the dishwasher is ‘contaminated’ with animal product, and the fridge has ‘bacon grease fingers’ on it (because I eat bacon and then touch the fridge) and she’s asked me and her mom to completely stop eating meat at home. I don’t mean I literally touch the fridge with greasy bacon hands, because I wash my hands, but it’s clearly enough that it upsets my daughter.

frankly I’m on team hell no, her mom is much more amenable and strongly wants me to consider taking our daughter up on the request. My wife’s reasoning is that both our parents live close so we can eat meat products there, and that she doesn’t want our daughter to feel uncomfortable in the kitchen.

My daughter says she is fine with cheese and butter in the fridge, but it’s specifically meat products that make her feel sick. Now I’m sorry for her, but I feel like she just needs to adapt and live side by side, because I’m not going to stop eating bacon in my own house.

Here’s how people reacted to the post:

DoffyTrash −  NTA. Get her a special sponge she can use to wash her own dishes so she didn’t have to use the “tainted” dishwasher.

TheRagingScientist −  As a teen who’s trying to go vegetarian, your daughter is acting ridiculous. “The dish washing machine’s tainted”? What kind of bull is that? And she shouldn’t be forcing you guys to go vegan in your own house if you don’t want to. You’ve been very supportive as it is, buying separate pans. YWNBTA

Edit: and, if she really wants to change your diet, she should try and give you info on how bad the meat and dairy industry is, and how unhealthy large amounts of meat are for the modern human, yadaydayada. Then you guys make your own choices on what you want to eat.

Edit 2: I’m gonna take this time to say that.
1: please, regardless of if you’re a meat eater, vegan, vegetarian, whatever. Please be civil in discussions over this. If you want to be pissed off over something, this really shouldn’t be it.

2: I really didn’t want to start any debates but whatever. Just take everything anyone (and I include myself) say with a grain of salt if they don’t provide links to a credible source. Honestly it’s been nice just talking to people getting varying opinions on this subject, but I’m starting to see a bit of hate flow through a few people just showing up.

purplegirl1511 −  NTA, and I say that as a vegan. “cross contamination” is BS that militant vegans make up to make themselves feel superior to other vegans. And she has to understand that there’s going to be meat around. I get that it upsets her, really, but unless she only lives with vegans for the rest of her life this is something she is going to have to get used to. A compromise might be too keep the meat in a drawer in the fridge rather than getting rid of it altogether.

She’s young, and a new vegan, so the good news is that she will probably grow out of/ease up on it. When you first go vegan you’re so excited and feel so enlightened, like no one ever figured this out before you. Then you get a little jaded and relax a bit. Try to tough it out and keep talking to her. But no, you do not need to stop making/storing meat in your house just for her. Edit: I am very clearly not talking about cross contamination when it comes to food allergies.

Zauberspruch −  NTA. She’s 14. There is no middle ground at 14. My condolences, as it’s going to be a long winter.

PommeDeSang −  Pfft had a vegan roommate in the past. He used the fridge and dishwasher just fine. Time for a real world lesson for her – she’s not always gonna live with people who share her food lifestyle. She’s got to learn to compromise. There is no reason to inconvenience yourselves and others because she’s being a dramatic teen. Compromise – She has her own cookware and her own meat free section of the fridge.

13rahma −  NTA. You’re already being as supporting as you can, but at the end of the day it’s your house. You don’t need to bend the knee to your daughter over this.

RonDeGrasseDawtchins −  NTA, obviously. You’ve been supportive of her new diet choice and have been very accommodating by getting her pans to use for vegan food. She can’t expect you to change your whole lifestyle to cater to her. Meat needs to be kept in the fridge, and if the dishwasher is tainted then maybe she should try washing a dish by hand *GASP*.

brandonnavi −  You know the answer, I’m assuming this is for your wife 😄 You are accommodating despite it being irrational. It’s now being pushed to a new level of irrational. Explain to your daughter that you’re trying to be as accommodating as possible but this is too far for you and there’s no grounds for farther arguing because you don’t have the same perspective as her. She might be mad at you, but when she has her own living space and gets to make the rules, she might understand why you don’t want to be forced to go elsewhere to eat.

LifeExplorer64 −  NTA many vegans cohabitate successfully with meat eaters, your daughter is pushing the line here and being unreasonable. You have gone out of your way to support her dietary choices (I’m assuming that she washes her own pans and dishes by hand herself rather than using the contaminated dishwasher lol) it is time for her to learn how to coexist peacefully with people that dont think exactly like she does.

I think you wife is 100% wrong here and is trying to take the easy way to avoiding an angsty teenager being difficult….this is a fantastic learning experience for your daughter in tolerance and compromise.

Hennahands −  NTA, but this actually sounds really complicated. Teenage girls can have very contentious relationships with food, and that can express themselves in a lot of ways. I think you need to get more information going forward. She might just be a teen pushing limits and seeing what she can control. She might also genuinely be struggling with ideas about, “cleanliness” as it related to food.