Should there be a 'parenting' skill?

[jacobmuller]

Perhaps it is a career skill, like crewman and soldier. Something like Parenting, IQ/A, default IQ-5, Psych-4, Leadership-3, Intimidation-3, etc
It allows you to do the stuff needed to get by... Some folk are talented, some are dedicatedly skillful, others are uncaring, un"educated" or simply inept (antitalent?).

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Okay, I've read through the whole thread. And while I have no children, I am from a family where 3-to-6 children is the norm, so I have a lot of baby-sitting experience and second-hand child-rearing tales. Think of me as an informed layman.

From a game perspective, the child-care itself relies on a lot of skills. The simplest approach is to look at the description for the Soldier skill

Soldier includes basic lessons in many fields covered by other skills.
For instance, a TL8 soldier learns to strip his rifle without learning Armoury (Small Arms), to use a radio without learning Electronics Operation (Comm), to dig a foxhole without learning Engineer (Combat), and so forth. In a situation where someone with one of those skills would roll at +4 or better for a routine task (see Task Difficulty, p. 345), the GM may let you roll against Soldier skill instead. You do not receive the bonus that someone with the fullfledged skill would get, but you do suffer any situational penalties.

I think the Parenting skill would work the same. Although I think it would be Will/A or HT/A rather than IQ/A. A lot of parenting depends more on willingness to be a parent rather than thinking things through. (As a cousin of mine once said "If I thought this through, I wouldn't have six kids!")

EDIT: jacobmuller posted just as I did. But we seem to be thinking along the same lines.

[Nymdok]

Parenting is a skill with specialization by age.

Infant - Defaults to Vet, biology, Medicine etc
The simplest to take care of, but most delicate stage.

Child - Defaults to Animal Handling
Reasonably sturdy and Still fairly simple to take care of. Motor skills are still relatively poor as are Communication Skills

Teen - Defaults to Psychological Warfare/Interrogation/Espionage
Tempestuous and requiring signifigant time/money investment this is largely the 'Final Exam' of parenting


Adult - .....You'll know as soon as I do :)

Daughter = 18
Son = 17

Nymdok

[Kaldrin]

Parenting seems to follow the course of:

First child - everything is a threat. You 'safety'-blitz everything and everyone. When the child gets a bruise you scream for blood because they slipped and fell while running in the house and we wind up with plastic coated, rounded corner worlds. This is also the stage at which you dutifully record every first, even cutting a lock of hair off the baby and putting it in a scrapbook or something.

Second child - still a bit of the first, but now that you realize you can make more the safety thing isn't such a big issue. Some things about early life are recorded, but not much.

Third and beyond - When you see your kids running along the fence top or jumping from the roof into a pile of leaves you can be heard to shout, "Put some shoes on!" Nothing is recorded.

That's parenting in a nutshell... or at least from my experience. TV did most of my upbringing.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

This means that most people will be able to get by with default rolls, those with good social skills (or just good attributes to base their social skills off) will generally be slightly better parents than average, people with exceptionally bad social skills (whether from low attributes or disadvantages) will be worse than average at raising children and some parents could justify putting a couple of points into skills like Leadership or Teaching (or the Dabbler perk for such skills) simply from being parents.

The thing is that people who have good social skills generally still experience raising that first child as a new and challenging task. And lots of people acquire expertise in it who don't thereby become superb at dealing with more general social situations. I suppose you could model it as a bunch of optional specializations of things like Fast-Talk and Diplomacy, but I think it's easier to put it all together.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kaldrin

First child - everything is a threat. You 'safety'-blitz everything and everyone. When the child gets a bruise you scream for blood because they slipped and fell while running in the house and we wind up with plastic coated, rounded corner worlds. This is also the stage at which you dutifully record every first, even cutting a lock of hair off the baby and putting it in a scrapbook or something.

That's the default rolls. . . .

Bill Stoddard

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

Shouldn't that kind of thing be covered by the Housekeeping skill?

What if they are refugees taking care of someone in the middle of the wilderness? This would be very likely to come up in a game.

What if they are an elder sibling who has little to do with running the house but much to do with taking care of the young'uns?

What if they are a babysitter?

[Mathulhu]

Think about it as a modelling problem
A PC is interacting with an NPC is a multitude of different ways over a huge time span, at least 10 years.

Would you really want to model that with a single skill?

To save time and energy you might fudge it with a single roll, but would that feel right?

[OneSeventeen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I suppose you could model it as a bunch of optional specializations of things like Fast-Talk and Diplomacy, but I think it's easier to put it all together.

As I was reading, I think I had this thought. You could model it in a similar way to reading/writing; basically optional specialties. The default specialty for Fast Talk is (adults), say. And so parents need Fast Talk(children) and, later, Fast Talk(teenagers) or however you want to break it down. It default to the other specialties favorably, but that way, Mr. Bond still sucks at talking to an eight year old or whatever. Seems very complex.


Ben

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

That works. How is persuading a child to concentrate on working towards their goals and not screw up their life any different to doing the same with an employee, a member of your squad or any other person you have authority over? It's basically the same skill as you would use on an adult, it's just that when applied to a child the task difficulty modifier will be very favourable to you because you have significantly more familiarity with and control over a child than you would most adults.

This means that most people will be able to get by with default rolls, those with good social skills (or just good attributes to base their social skills off) will generally be slightly better parents than average, people with exceptionally bad social skills (whether from low attributes or disadvantages) will be worse than average at raising children and some parents could justify putting a couple of points into skills like Leadership or Teaching (or the Dabbler perk for such skills) simply from being parents.

If you take that approach I would give you a TDM that would off set or be worse than the bonus you would get for familiarity. While Children are individual people they are not mini adults