mindrot

Is adoption a concept in your constructed world's civilization(s)? Is it a legal process? Is it stigmatized? Do the peoples in your civilization(s) see child rearing as a community project, or more private? Does trans-lineage adoption exist? How about trans-species adoption?

I made a small response on the platform but I hate truncating my speech and making annoying long threads so I am going to address this question with the depth id deserves, here.

First, I think we need to address the issue of what causes a child to require being adopted in the first place. At its most vague it is because the child is abandoned either voluntarily or involuntarily. From there we have to interrogate those factors.

What would cause a child to be abandoned voluntarily?

• The child is unwanted, for reasons that can include:
• • The pregnancy itself was unwanted and could not be prevented before birth.
  • The child is behavioraly difficult to care for.
  • The existence of the child causes social conflict.
• The family unable to care for the child.
• • Housing is insufficient for another child.
  • They are unable to keep the whole family fed
  • Health is too expensive to keep up with

What would cause a child to be abandoned involuntarily?

• The parents are either dead or missing.
• The parents were deemed unfit and the child was removed.

I went through all the effort to itemize these caveats because as I start to explain the specifics of Ertakar social structure and world view, you'll have a better understanding of what I mean when I say, abandoned children are extremely uncommon in Ertakar society.

First is the matter of pregnancy itself. Contraceptives and other birth control is something that is freely available, easy to access, and socially accepted as normal and important. This means the chances of there being 'unwanted' children by way of undesired pregnancy is exceedingly rare. Related to this, medical assistance is very easy to access and not monetized. This means any complications with the pregnancy, disability, health, and so on are taken care of as needed without one's income status being a factor at all.

After that, is housing. Territories exist, so there is 'ownership' in that, but the idea that individuals monetarily own land is absurd to them across all cultures. Because of this social perception, the very concept of providing some currency or exchange just to live in a place is absurd. Pay for the labor of the home to live in, sure, but to remain there? Of course not. This means the fear of loosing housing is nonexistent, if you have a home, its yours. And especially in the case of the capital my story will take place in, housing is open and divvied out to anyone that asks. You put in requests for what you need and move as much or as little as you need. This is important for matters of disability, where residents are provided the home that meets their needs, so any family with a child that has certain disabilities they can be provided housing that accommodates them and thus ease the strain on the family as a whole. Other communities of Ertakar are of similar minds to provide as a community even if they do it in different ways with different expectations.

Finally, is food. Ertkar are active hunters and facultative carnivores. This means their diet even in their 'modern' day consists of prey they hunt themselves. This means there is no 'food industry' which mean food isn't something you pay for so the factor of hunger is only caused by environmental factors, not artificially constructed ones. If you can hunt you can eat, and if you can't hunt there is community there to help you hunt or do it for you.

All these factors make the effort of childrearing far less stressful, which gives families more means to address any interpersonal and behavioral conflict with the care and attention it deserves and gives a lower stress threshold to start with to be able to handle that. There can still be abandonment for behavioral reasons but this is very uncommon.

And then there's the structure of child-rearing in Ertakar societies.

The concept of the family is very flexible in most Ertakar. While it varies between societies, on the whole Ertakar aren't strict about things like marital status and structure. With the long life they live, it is considered common to have an average of three long-term partners. Parting ways because one wanted to raise the child and the other didn't isn't uncommon, though communication is often still kept with old partner. Even more than that, some Ertakar societies participate in communal child-rearing. In these communities, if a child's family is indisposed they would be taken in by one of the families already participating in their rearing, so there would be no need for formal adoption as they already had familial connections with others even if not related by blood.

Now after ALL of that, what happens in the case of a child that has no one in a non-communal rearing environment? In many cases, adoption is pretty informal. Probably the most 'documented' of the cultures is the capital the story takes place in. In which case, adoption would be a series of special community handlers investigating the reasons for said abandonment (since it's already so rare) followed by some paperwork for the purposes of tracking the child's residence. Probably also some work to see if any new housing would need to be arranged for those taking in the child. Because of the communal nature of the society, it is extremely uncommon that a child is taken in by complete strangers.

So all this to say that for Ertakar, adoption isn't stigmatized, the legal process is loose if nonexistent in some cases and most of the society sees community as important to the raising of children but the extent of the involvement differs.

And then.

There's the humans.

So I'm operating on the 'current day' of the society, where the comic will take place in. Humans have been on the planet for about a century by now, and some culture has shifted to the Ertakar way of life, but some of them still cling to ideals they brought with them from Earth, such as value placed on monetary wealth which still causes some friction with the Ertakar and of course, each other.

They receive many of the same benefits of the Ertakar: Free housing and free medical care. This does eliminate some of the conditions that might cause one to abandon a child, however it does not eliminate social pressure.

The social pressure to have a child at all is something many Humans struggle with. (Such as the pressure to 'repopulate' on the planet but that's its own can of worms.) And because of the carried over desire for capital, there is still a few smatterings of financial instability to struggle with. So while he child abandonment rate for Humans is higher than that of the Ertakar, it's still not something that requires an institution like an Orphanage to handle.

Also, child abandonment for humans is more loaded than for Ertakar. With the population as small as it is, it's almost impossible to do without the whole community knowing. Despite not being on earth they still want to handle much of it like they would have on Earth in hopes of reaching contact with their home and being able to smooth everything out legally. However, if an Ertakar took the human child in? That can be major social conflict depending on the company kept.

These are all important factors that relate to why it was so difficult for Talon's mother, Tlakanok, to adopt a child. Her home where she came from raised communally, but she was deemed more important to work as a guard and was not permitted to be part of the child rearing group. She left for the capital where she heard the growing population of Humans had some issues with tending to children and she was happy to help there, but then war broke out.