Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

I would buy that more if I didn't regularly see parents obviously not getting the basic discipline thing right.

Here's a couple of bits from my campaign:

"Gianni takes Constanza home, prepares dinner, and then talks with her about the memetic crisis. In the course of the evening, he gets in touch with Fred’s father and learns that Fred didn’t make it—his brain had been oxygen starved too long and he was flatlined. There was a small chance that he might be uploadable, but as the family is Traditionalist Catholic, that’s not an option. So Gianni has to break the news to Constanza, who is upset and angry, and wants to know why God didn’t protect Fred—a question Gianni can’t really answer."

"Early in the morning, not long after he drops Constanza off at her weekend playgroup, Gianni gets a call from the Montréal Child Welfare Agency. The caller, an SAI named Adrian, asks if Gianni wishes to view some video of his daughter’s recent activities. When he agrees, he gets to view images of his daughter talking, mildly flirtatiously, with a slightly older boy, and smoking a cigarette while she does so. Closer attention to the details shows that it’s his own brand, and it doesn’t look like her first cigarette.

Gianni is taken aback. Adrian assures him that the Child Welfare Agency does not plan to take further action; their role in such incidents is simply to notify the parents. Adrian is willing to refer Gianni to someone else in the agency if he feels a need for advice. Gianni thanks him, but isn’t interested. Instead he calls Blake, and asks her to explain to him why Constanza’s implant didn’t notify him. Blake suggests calling the implant privately and asking it.

. . .

Gianni talks with Constanza about her smoking; she apparently is expecting this, presumably because Terpsichore warned her earlier that weekend, and seems a bit ill at ease all day. She tells Gianni that she thought it looked cool, and one of the characters she played in a virtual realm smoked, and she wanted to do it in the real world; she pointed out that there are filter lungs like her father’s and nanotech lung scrubbers, so what was the problem? Gianni isn’t moved, and she finally backs down. She asks him to stop using Terpsichore to monitor what she does, because it makes her feel that he doesn’t trust her; he points out that his trusting her got him a call from the Child Welfare Department."

In both cases it was mainly an influence/psychology type of thing, and thus a specialized human relations skill. The physical tasks are mostly trivial by comparison, I think.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

This sounds like a really cool campaign.

I'm still not sure the actual conversations would require Professional Skill (Child Care) as opposed to simple IQ rolls. However, the way I set it up in my example, you could do it either way...not having the skill doesn't mean you'll totally foul up as a parent, because most tasks are routine, but having the skill would let you tackle difficult situations more easily. (If the parent does not take time to calm down and think things through, the flirting and cigarette thing might be at a penalty because it was a bit of a shock. But one could handle this either as a penalty to the IQ roll or as +0 skill task rather than a +4 routine skill task.)

Mark

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

Actual that my point of mechanically treating it like the brawling skill. With no points in the skill throwing a punch default to DX, But if you put points into it you can do better.

if you don put points inot the parenting skill your rolling on IQ, but if you study/train you can get better than IQ

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

I seem to remember a thread some time back where someone suggested it was a specialty of Animal Handling.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

Ideas.

"Parenting" is a far more complicated skill that, I humbly suggest, is not well understood.
One part is Diplomacy, to get people to do what you want.
One part is Leadership, to get others to follow you.
One part is Teaching, to instruct others. Assuming you have something to teach...
Varying parts of Fast Talk and Persuade, Suggest, Sway Emotions mixed in.

Animal Handling might be a starting point (no offense intended). But "Parenting" has far 'softer' goals than learning a trick, and a far smarter target.

I suggest no specific skill is warranted. Use skill relevant to the situation.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

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.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

Bardic influence is supernatural, my parents at least seemed pretty mundane.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

This is why I favor having Professional Skill: Parenting. My character was the one in whswhs's THS campaign with the daughter.

By basing it on good social skills, then James Bond makes the best parent ever...but an average frumpy person...not so much.

You make it PS: Parenting, and with the bonus to routine tasks most people do okay off of default...and then over time they learn that skill a bit through OJT. If PS: Housekeeping is a skill, then PS: Parenting is definitely kosher as a skill.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

If you want to decide whether Parenting or Childrearing is Easy, Average, Hard, or whatever, work backward.

Most people learn it as they go. How many hours of self-study does it take to get proficient at it? How many hours per day does one practice it?* After years of raising children, how good at it does the average person become? Do the math and work it out.

How often do you do roll against Parenting? Daily? Hourly? Weekly?

*Note: I'm not saying "how many hours a day are you a parent," because the answer is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Obviously, you aren't actually using your parenting skills for all 24 hours: part of the time you are working, sleeping, shopping, cleaning, and whatnot. If everybody got 24 hours of credit for "Parenting self-study" every day, then every parent could put 21 character points per year into it (if they had 21 points to spend, of course). By the time the kid is 18, the parents could spend 394 points in Parenting. Frankly, most people just aren't that good at it.

Re: Should there be a 'parenting' skill?
 

Agreed on both counts. As the father of three (and one of those is disabled), caring for children and housekeeping are not the same thing (although there could be some limited overlap) and it is definately not an Easy skill.

Agreed here also. My wife and I actually discussed child rearing options as much as we could ahead of time and (based on everyone's comments about our children being exceptionally behaved and adjusted) I think it worked well. I also suspect that most parents -to-be in the modern world don't do this and that this leads to exactly what Lazlo_woodbine and walkir mention above.

I definately love this analogy!

Again I must agree, and the bit about James Bond is a very humorous way to illustrate the point. :)

Fish's observations also make a addition to this, IMO it is an Average or Hard skill personally, definately not something that would be considered Easy.