My daughter and her best friend are in the kitchen rummaging through the cabinets. They find what they’re looking for: gummy bears.

“Those might be old,” I say.

We don’t care.

“Fine, but before you eat them I want you to watch this video.”

I’ve been meaning to show my daughter this video, but the timing never seemed right. When is it ever a good time to get stung in the eye? (“Now that everyone’s finished eating pie, can someone bring in the bee?”) I retrieve my phone and pull up the clip. Midway through, my daughter buries her head and cries. Her friend, motionless, stares at the floor.

My regret is instant and sharp. I am the worst mother ever.

I haven’t shown them anything particularly graphic: This is science; this is how gummy bears are made. The video shows dead pigs strung upside down on a factory conveyer belt. Their skin is being shaved with a butcher’s electric saw. The pigs face an incinerator and begin to melt near the inferno — then the camera cuts away. Surely two sixth graders have seen animals roasted before. There’s a Greek restaurant we frequent where gyro spins on a spit, bacon sizzles on the grill, raw meat is seasoned and mashed into patties. This is dinner. This is life.

I reason with my panicked self: All I’ve done is draw the curtain. I’ve taken them behind the scenes, shown them the props and the prop masters — where the magic happens. I didn’t find the video on the dark web; it’s from a popular Belgian show called Over Eten about how our food is made. The show’s hosts are beautiful model-type people. HuffPost Parents shared the video on its Facebook page. It’s okay, I tell myself, this is hard, but it’s okay.

So why do I feel so bad? Why do I feel I’ve done something I want to undo? Kids her age play Fortnite — the first-person shooter game where players entertain themselves by killing puppies with guns and axes. I’m sorry, did I say puppies? I meant people. (Puppies being shot in the head with an AR-15 wouldn’t fly. Parents would be outraged.) Plus, loads of her friends have access to YouTube, where videos of children being force-fed by their parents or urinated on by siblings abound. There are millions of “wacky” family videos masquerading as friendly content. YouTube identifies them as child-abuse fetish channels, but struggles to keep up with deleting them. Then there’s this guy: YouTuber Dick-Around Dylan, who wanders the streets asking girls and strangers sexually explicit questions and talking about how many b*tches he f****. His biggest fan base? Middle-schoolers.

Point being: I need to calm down. I haven’t shown my daughter and her friend anything morally questionable.

Have I?

So much of who we are is decided for us: by genes, by nurture, by sheer luck.

I’ve got two kids crying in my kitchen; one is a vegetarian and the other loves bacon. My daughter doesn’t eat meat. She knows gelatin (a common candy ingredient) comes from animals but until now, she hadn’t pictured the how of it. I understand why my kid is upset… but her best friend? The lover of pepperoni and bacon? Surely, she knows the mechanics of her dinner. Surely, this is not a surprise. (For the record, my husband eats meat, and so does my youngest daughter.)

I do what any parent would in a panic: I give the kids candy and talk quickly while they chew. (Thank you, Skittles. Bless your pig-free rainbow.) I explain the power of choice. A Google search results in a list of gelatin-free options: Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, Twizzlers.

Which brings me out of my kitchen and into the great wide world:

As parents, we aim to raise compassionate humans. No one gazes lovingly at their baby thinking: I hope he grows up to be hedonistic egoist. The question is, who, specifically, should be the recipient of that compassion? Is there a hierarchical order, and does it change over time or with location? Society’s behavior reflects the moral flux of its time. Slavery was legal, then it wasn’t. There were no laws in the U.S. protecting children from abusive parents. The first case against child abuse was brought forward, ironically, by the ASPCA in 1874 when it tried to save a little girl named Mary Ellen McCormack from her mother. The ASPCA hired a trial lawyer to argue that children are as much a part of the animal kingdom as horses and pets, and they too, deserve rescuing.

Hitler’s racial hierarchy reigned not so long ago. (Which wasn’t fully Hitler’s — German eugenics were influenced by American eugenics. I’m looking at you, California.) You had your Nordics at the top, your southern Europeans, and below that, your homosexuals, disabled, and otherwise genetically unfit. Beneath them were the Slavs, equatorial Africans, and at the bottom were Jews. Don’t forget the basement: That’s where the women are, all of them, Jew or not. As for war and its politics of death, the ranking is universal: Better their sons dead than ours. It makes sense that we extend this ranking system to animals. You’ve got your pups and kitties up top, and your Bessies and Wilburs at the bottom.

I’m often praised at barbecues: “You’re such a good mom for not forcing your views on your kids.” Meat-eaters look at me and like what they see: a vegetarian who “allows” her child to eat animals. “It’s great that you let her make her own decision about meat!” I nod and smile. Secretly, I imagine replying: I’m going to let my daughter poke your dog in the eye because I want her to make her own decision about animal suffering.

Never do we hear, “It’s Johnny’s choice if he wants to shoplift or steal from his friends, I’m not going to make that decision for him.”

As parents, do we not “force our views” on our children every day? You shall not punch, kick, or steal. You shall not hurt your (sister/ friend/ teacher/ birdy/ planet). You shall not take (Jesus/ Yahweh/ Allah/ Brahman/ Waheguru’s) name in vain. Childhood is a series of shall nots: partly because no one wants to raise a heartless narcissist, and partly due to random assignment of birth. Imagine souls comparing schedules before the first day of life:

What’d you get for religion? I got Catholic.

Darn, I got Zoroastrianism. Maybe we can still sit together at lunch?

So much of who we are is decided for us: by genes, by nurture, by sheer luck. So why, as a parent — as a nurturer — do I hesitate to decide this? Living ethically means striving to do the least harm possible, does it not? American children don’t need to eat animals for survival. It’s a choice, like chocolate or vanilla, paper or plastic.