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[WertyMiniBot]

Basically, this is a suggestion to include ethics for making an entity's children work or even fight alongside the adults. Child labor would essentially make children work like other people in the town (they could also become apprentices to adults) so that they can be useful in the fortress. Humans and Animal People would approve of adolescent labor, Dwarves would approve of child labor a few years past babyhood, Goblins and Kobolds would approve of child labor immediately past babyhood, and Elves would not allow child labor finding it misguided. Meanwhile, child warfare would make children either fight alongside, or support the adults warriors. Humans would only allow adolescents supporting the warriors, Dwarves and Animal People would allow only adolescents to fight or support, Kobolds would allow adolescents to fight and support while children a few years past babyhood could only support, and Goblins would allow anybody past babyhood to fight or support including snatchees. I believe adding child labor for some civilizations in DF would finally allow Dwarves to put some of children to use, and add yet another thing which civilizations could argue about.

DISCLAIMER: I do not condone the use of children in slavery or warfare.

[Vattic]

Considering that dwarves, humans, and elves are considered adults at age 12 we sort of already have child labour as we'd understand it today. Otherwise I like your suggestion.

[WertyMiniBot]

Adolescence in DF could be set to 8 years, or we could have beginning of adulthood moved to 20 and have 13 years be the start of adolescent.

[GoblinCookie]

I do not really support this suggestion, the reason being that the game presently does not really model children and their physical limitations very well. 

Also, it would imply that children are born with the skills to do things like metal smithing.  At least at the moment they have 12 years to observe other dwarves born inherantly able to do stuff about the fortress, but having small children born able to do the tasks that adults can do is madness.

It also does not make socio-economic sense because the conditions for child labour do not exist.  There is more than enough adults around to do all the tasks, historically child labour was/is a function of having a large number of competing household family buisnesses (ie the real middle ages) that need to both educate their children and increase their competative edge/profits by maximising their own productivity.  It was abolished because education was a more effective

Instead of simply having children work on adult tasks, children should attach themselves to an adult individual that has the skills they wish to learn and observe what he does to gain skills as an apprentic.  Once they gain some skill they would then progress to helping said individual do his tasks, which would increase the speed at which the individual completes his tasks.  Once the child grows up he would do the task himself.

Adult dwarves could be assigned as apprentices focusing on a particular skill.  They would function as the children do, first observing and then helping.  Unlike with children however their apprentice status ends when they reach a predefined skill, not when they grow up.

[WertyMiniBot]

I mentioned apprenticeship as one of the routes we could take into child labor. It would actually make more sense to have apprenticeships with adults. Apprenticing dwarven children would not only somewhat speed up the dwarven work force. Most dwarves would welcome such added efficency. It would also be a good way to train the child to be more than just a peasant when they are adults.

That's the thing about children; sure they're young for about 12 years, but they never intake any actual skill simply by watching the adult dwarves. Only on rare strange moods can they ever gain skill. And since goblins are unethical in every single property, they'll find some way to train a child metalsmith.

Also, I did not say that infants would be able to work right as they were born (not until about 5 or 6). 

Lastly, when up to a third of my fortress population tends to be migrated children, it just makes me want to use them even more. I mean, 12 years is quite a long time to wait and protect them from fun.

I do agree that apprenticeship would be a nice way integrating dwarven children into the workforce, though.

[GoblinCookie]

I mentioned apprenticeship as one of the routes we could take into child labor. It would actually make more sense to have apprenticeships with adults. Apprenticing dwarven children would not only somewhat speed up the dwarven work force. Most dwarves would welcome such added efficency. It would also be a good way to train the child to be more than just a peasant when they are adults.

That's the thing about children; sure they're young for about 12 years, but they never intake any actual skill simply by watching the adult dwarves. Only on rare strange moods can they ever gain skill. And since goblins are unethical in every single property, they'll find some way to train a child metalsmith.

Also, I did not say that infants would be able to work right as they were born (not until about 5 or 6). 

Lastly, when up to a third of my fortress population tends to be migrated children, it just makes me want to use them even more. I mean, 12 years is quite a long time to wait and protect them from fun.

I do agree that apprenticeship would be a nice way integrating dwarven children into the workforce, though.

I think apprenticeship should be the only route we have to use child labour.  5 or 6 is way too young to be concievably able to do advanced tasks and the game does not properly model the physical/intellectual limitations of children. 

By intake skill I mean their actual ability to do tasks like metalworking without killing themselves not how good they are at it.  A 6 year old is worse than skill 0 at something like that.

[Shazbot]

I would divide the child age by two (adulthood at 12, divides to 6) and allow hauling labors and being independent from mothers at that age. Apprenticeships are currently meaningless as six years working as a blacksmith will result in a legendary blacksmith with or without an apprenticeship to a legendary blacksmith. However, if skill gains were greatly diminished or even capped without having read literature by or apprenticed under a (likely mood-created) legendary smith, apprenticeships become relevant. Skill gain might advance fractionally even without help so a very long-lived fortress with a smith who wears his anvil round could still produce a legendary.

DISCLAIMER: I do agree with child labor. Clean up your room!

[Detoxicated]

Also with taverns coming up and festivals, children wouldn't regularily go to work unless their personality would tell them to do so.

[GoblinCookie]

I would divide the child age by two (adulthood at 12, divides to 6) and allow hauling labors and being independent from mothers at that age. Apprenticeships are currently meaningless as six years working as a blacksmith will result in a legendary blacksmith with or without an apprenticeship to a legendary blacksmith. However, if skill gains were greatly diminished or even capped without having read literature by or apprenticed under a (likely mood-created) legendary smith, apprenticeships become relevant. Skill gain might advance fractionally even without help so a very long-lived fortress with a smith who wears his anvil round could still produce a legendary.

DISCLAIMER: I do agree with child labor. Clean up your room!

It will not result in a legendery blacksmith if we cap the skill gain to say half of the master's skill gain. 

[Vattic]

I dunno I quite like the idea of some students surpassing their master. It's got a nice narrative ring to it and makes sense realistically.

[GoblinCookie]

I dunno I quite like the idea of some students surpassing their master. It's got a nice narrative ring to it and makes sense realistically.

We are talking about children, not grownups. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Also, it would imply that children are born with the skills to do things like metal smithing.  At least at the moment they have 12 years to observe other dwarves born inherantly able to do stuff about the fortress, but having small children born able to do the tasks that adults can do is madness.

A completely untrained peasant raised by wolves who has never even seen a forge can build an anvil into a forge and start pounding out plate mail in this game.  The problem you have with it can be mapped onto all dwarves, regardless of age. 

That said, I think that the current "teenagers are adults that can marry and have kids" system is pretty ridiculous (especially when it's even mapped onto ageless elves and regularly-lives-to-160 dwarves, meaning they age more slowly if at all, but grow just as fast...).  For that matter, right now, children, from the age of 1 onwards (which, I will point out is as soon as most children can walk,) are capable of performing what limited tasks children can perform, amusingly including harvesting crops.  (Because we all know how helpful two-year-olds want to be, just out there picking crops without complaining on the family farm!)

Dividing up stages of adolescence that allows for different types of tasks to "become available" as they pass out of the toddler stage makes far more sense. 

Apprenticeship has been discussed as a separate suggestion for some time, but it runs into the problem I highlighted above: There's currently no in-game need for any education other than ordering a dwarf to just start making practice items all day every day until they hit legendary.  Unless the apprentice's job is to go grab the raw materials for the worker, it would basically just be some kid hovering around a workshop and maybe slowing the worker down a bit.  In fact, since migrant labor is for all intents and purposes free and infinite, it screws up player priorities to a massive degree, and most players never even raise a child as a viable new fortress member to begin with, and many resent children and try to kill them or prevent births.  Telling them that they need to put in more labor to make them useful much later down the road when they can just kill them and get a new migrant that does the same job with no effort spent on training on the player's part?  That's begging for more babyfalls.

That said, I do like the academy suggestion, to some extent, and it could be extrapolated into "primary education". 

[GoblinCookie]

A completely untrained peasant raised by wolves who has never even seen a forge can build an anvil into a forge and start pounding out plate mail in this game.  The problem you have with it can be mapped onto all dwarves, regardless of age. 

That said, I think that the current "teenagers are adults that can marry and have kids" system is pretty ridiculous (especially when it's even mapped onto ageless elves and regularly-lives-to-160 dwarves, meaning they age more slowly if at all, but grow just as fast...).  For that matter, right now, children, from the age of 1 onwards (which, I will point out is as soon as most children can walk,) are capable of performing what limited tasks children can perform, amusingly including harvesting crops.  (Because we all know how helpful two-year-olds want to be, just out there picking crops without complaining on the family farm!)

Yes the problem is that dwarves are able to do certain difficult and dangerous tasks even when completely untrained.  However I like to think of the education as being abstracted out of the game, the reason they are able to do those tasks is because they were given basic education to so them as children.

I do not understand what is ridiculous about 12 year-old marriage or elves taking the normal amount of time to grow up.  Marrying is not something that requires prior education, merely sexual impulses which 12 year-old's generally have.  How fast elf children grow up is completely different from how long elves live because how quickly a creature reaches maturity has nothing to do with it's longevity. 

Dividing up stages of adolescence that allows for different types of tasks to "become available" as they pass out of the toddler stage makes far more sense. 

Apprenticeship has been discussed as a separate suggestion for some time, but it runs into the problem I highlighted above: There's currently no in-game need for any education other than ordering a dwarf to just start making practice items all day every day until they hit legendary.  Unless the apprentice's job is to go grab the raw materials for the worker, it would basically just be some kid hovering around a workshop and maybe slowing the worker down a bit.  In fact, since migrant labor is for all intents and purposes free and infinite, it screws up player priorities to a massive degree, and most players never even raise a child as a viable new fortress member to begin with, and many resent children and try to kill them or prevent births.  Telling them that they need to put in more labor to make them useful much later down the road when they can just kill them and get a new migrant that does the same job with no effort spent on training on the player's part?  That's begging for more babyfalls.

That said, I do like the academy suggestion, to some extent, and it could be extrapolated into "primary education".

We do not need stages of adolescence nor of childhood (not saying this is a bad idea) in order to implement the idea of a minimum age for jobs to be done at.  We just set the jobs the creature-type is actually capable physically of performing and the minimum age at which they can do them.

The idea of apprentices is to make children useful and also allow them to reach adulthood with skills that allow them to match those immigrant dwarves that arrive.  Apprentices do not reduce productivity, instead they increase the productivity of the dwarf that they are attached to by doing various abstracted away simple menial tasks (not hauling) that dwarf would normally do themselves as part of the job but do not require special skills.  As they serve as apprentices they gradually learn the skills they help their master do and as their skills increase they add more productivity to their master as well. 

Their skill gain is capped at half of the skill of their master (no 12 year old legendary dwarves) and once they reach adulthood they become workers in the normal sense, able to do all the jobs that the other adult dwarves with the same skills can do.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yes the problem is that dwarves are able to do certain difficult and dangerous tasks even when completely untrained.  However I like to think of the education as being abstracted out of the game, the reason they are able to do those tasks is because they were given basic education to so them as children.

This is Dwarf Fortress.  What is this "abstraction" you speak of?

Not doing things in the most detailed and complex, computationally brute-force way possible?  Are you an elf or something?

I do not understand what is ridiculous about 12 year-old marriage or elves taking the normal amount of time to grow up.  Marrying is not something that requires prior education, merely sexual impulses which 12 year-old's generally have.  How fast elf children grow up is completely different from how long elves live because how quickly a creature reaches maturity has nothing to do with it's longevity. 

Generally speaking, even those 12-year-olds who actually have started menstruation (and while some do, plenty don't come around to it until 15 or so - there's a reason 16 is considered a woman's "coming of age" year,) will not be able to carry children as healthy or as safely to term as an adult. 

Having them spit out babies like a machine gun at 12 years of age onwards IS pretty ridiculous.  With medieval-level medicine at their disposal, you could expect at least 80% of them to die in childbirth from complications before they really became adults. 

We do not need stages of adolescence nor of childhood (not saying this is a bad idea) in order to implement the idea of a minimum age for jobs to be done at.  We just set the jobs the creature-type is actually capable physically of performing and the minimum age at which they can do them.

And how do you expect players to recognize when they have attained those ages?

Growth is divorced from life stages.  Life stages exist solely as a means of dictating what jobs/actions are available, and being a label for players to easily see what age they are.  If you break up what ages jobs become available, there's no reason not to use a label that tells the player what jobs the child is capable of taking.

The idea of apprentices is to make children useful and also allow them to reach adulthood with skills that allow them to match those immigrant dwarves that arrive.  Apprentices do not reduce productivity, instead they increase the productivity of the dwarf that they are attached to by doing various abstracted away simple menial tasks (not hauling) that dwarf would normally do themselves as part of the job but do not require special skills.

Translation: They do nothing. 

There are no other tasks to "abstract" in a workshop, dwarves just use the boulder or block they used to create a workshop to mold stone/wood/whatever with the power of their minds/beards.  Time spent at a workshop is always trivial compared to hauling, and as such, any other task is nonexistent. 

Their skill gain is capped at half of the skill of their master (no 12 year old legendary dwarves) and once they reach adulthood they become workers in the normal sense, able to do all the jobs that the other adult dwarves with the same skills can do.

Translation: All kids in your fortress will reach legendary (because your skill ranks can go up thousands of levels above legendary, and legendary workers are set to work round-the-clock creating vendor trash) in at least one skill, while all dwarves outside your fortress are stuck as novices and dabblers. 

[GoblinCookie]

This is Dwarf Fortress.  What is this "abstraction" you speak of?

Not doing things in the most detailed and complex, computationally brute-force way possible?  Are you an elf or something?

The whole of Fortress Mode is an abstraction of Adventurer mode. 

Generally speaking, even those 12-year-olds who actually have started menstruation (and while some do, plenty don't come around to it until 15 or so - there's a reason 16 is considered a woman's "coming of age" year,) will not be able to carry children as healthy or as safely to term as an adult. 

Having them spit out babies like a machine gun at 12 years of age onwards IS pretty ridiculous.  With medieval-level medicine at their disposal, you could expect at least 80% of them to die in childbirth from complications before they really became adults. 

Plenty of societies marry off their girls at 12-13.  Modern societies only invented the whole 16 thing because it allowed them to prolong the length of education.  The risks of childbirth have not been implemented yet but yes a somewhat increased risk of complications for under 16s could be implemented. 

And how do you expect players to recognize when they have attained those ages?

Growth is divorced from life stages.  Life stages exist solely as a means of dictating what jobs/actions are available, and being a label for players to easily see what age they are.  If you break up what ages jobs become available, there's no reason not to use a label that tells the player what jobs the child is capable of taking.

Because the children start doing the jobs?

Translation: They do nothing. 

There are no other tasks to "abstract" in a workshop, dwarves just use the boulder or block they used to create a workshop to mold stone/wood/whatever with the power of their minds/beards.  Time spent at a workshop is always trivial compared to hauling, and as such, any other task is nonexistent.   

They learn skills that will be useful when they grow up.  They also make your dwarves more productive, apprentices could also help their masters haul stuff too if hauling is the main issue. 

Translation: All kids in your fortress will reach legendary (because your skill ranks can go up thousands of levels above legendary, and legendary workers are set to work round-the-clock creating vendor trash) in at least one skill, while all dwarves outside your fortress are stuck as novices and dabblers.

The speed of skill-gain is another problem entirely.