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[Farmerbob]

Currently, children and pets seem to be very centric on their parents, frequently causing issues when the parents go and do dangerous things.

This is all very dwarfy, but for dwarven children, (not babies!) perhaps an AI touchup in regards to pets might be a good idea?

If a fortress has domestic animals that are capable of being pets, why not start bonding the pets and the children, not necessarily with adoption/firm relationships, but rather a caretaker arrangement.

If you have a pasture area, children would have the "job" of tending the pasture.  Nothing would stop them from doing whatever else they might want to do, but rather than being parent-centric, the children would be pasture-centric.

Taking care of domestic animals and notifying adults of problems with said animals has a long human tradition - it's an efficient use of a set of eyes and ears that aren't ready to do more difficult tasks.  I can't imagine that dwarves wouldn't have done the same thing.

In terms of gameplay, it would make children less likely to be accidental casualties in mining accidents, lava flow, drowning, goblin snatching, etc, provided that the pastures are well-located.  It might also help pathing framerates in fortresses where some female dwarves have 10+ children following them around like a train.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Leaving aside gameplay for a while...would you trust your five-year-old with the family dog? Would you do so if the family dog was actually a dangerous animal like a jabberer, tiger, or horse?

[PhoenixEggz]

Leaving aside gameplay for a while...would you trust your five-year-old with the family dog? Would you do so if the family dog was actually a dangerous animal like a jabberer, tiger, or horse?

Nope!

[Farmerbob]

Leaving aside gameplay for a while...would you trust your five-year-old with the family dog? Would you do so if the family dog was actually a dangerous animal like a jabberer, tiger, or horse?

I figure if a dwarf is clever enough to destroy a stone wall on command at age 5, or create an artifact toy, they can probably watch domestic animals.

Look at the literature on human shepherds.  As soon as a child could blow a horn and sling a stone, they could be a shepherd.  Normally a bit older than 5 years old, but again, Dwarves, despite being short, are larger-than-life, and far cooler than humans

[Deepblade]

Kids kinda "matured" faster and were put into a role of responsibility a lot quicker back then. In DF a Human kid reaches adult hood at 12, and that would still be too young by most of society's standard today. So, I can definitely see them getting a small safe job like this.

Though, if you just wanna keep your kids safe right now you can burrow them in a party hall with food and drink. But, if you're looking to make a kid useful without cheatering this could be a neat thing to keep the jerks from swarming around.