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Ways a culture raising their children communally would affect it.

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Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#1: Feb 3rd 2011 at 5:26:05 AM

So I have a race of merfolk who raise their kids in collective nests, most children not knowing who their parents are and vice versa, how might this affect their society?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
Leonshade Since: Jan, 2001
#2: Feb 3rd 2011 at 11:55:16 AM

Do the parents know who are their biological children? If not, how does the society stop inbreeding?

Tzetze DUMB from a converted church in Venice, Italy Since: Jan, 2001
DUMB
#3: Feb 3rd 2011 at 11:57:15 AM

You should probably find ethnographies of real societies that raise(d) their children in such a way.

edited 3rd Feb '11 11:57:21 AM by Tzetze

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.
Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#4: Feb 3rd 2011 at 3:26:11 PM

Mer emit pheromones that cause relatives to find them sexually unappealing. And know of any real world societies that do that?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
HistoryMaker Since: Oct, 2010
#5: Feb 24th 2011 at 7:19:02 PM

[up]Yes actually: Human.

Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) influences human pheromones. We tend to be more sexually attracted to people with a different MHC phenotype than our own. That means close relatives usually tend to be a turnoff.

HistoryMaker Since: Oct, 2010
#6: Feb 24th 2011 at 7:35:55 PM

Westermarck effect may or may not come into play in your society. When human children are raised communally (such as in an orphanage) they tend to see each other more as siblings and less as potential mates. Westermarck effect says that if a pair of individuals lives together during the first six years of either of their lives they will always respond with more or less “eww..he’s like my brother /she’s like my sister gross”. This effect is psychological and has nothing to do w/ genetics. Now since you race isn’t human you could just ignore this or you could include it. If you include it, mating with someone from your own nest would be taboo.

Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#7: Feb 24th 2011 at 8:15:51 PM

So how might naming children work in such a culture?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
HistoryMaker Since: Oct, 2010
#8: Feb 25th 2011 at 7:51:01 AM

The way I see it, a society where children are raised communally lends itself to a cast system. There’d be a group of individuals whose major job in life is the care, protection, and education of children. These guardians would give the children “first names” to help distinguish them from each other. Latter, perhaps at some rite of passage, the children themselves could choose there own “second name”. Names would not be in any way hereditary. Second names might indicate a choice of career /lifestyle.

edited 25th Feb '11 7:51:17 AM by HistoryMaker

Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#9: Feb 25th 2011 at 6:15:56 PM

So how might the culture handle reproduction?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
HistoryMaker Since: Oct, 2010
#10: Feb 25th 2011 at 8:32:15 PM

That would depend a lot on the biology and social structure of you species.

Are the more like mammals or fish?

Is the communal raising of children cultural or instinctive?

Are the babies liveborn or do the hatch from eggs?

How human/alien do you want these mer folk to be?

Is it important to you story for concepts like sex, romance, or pair bonding to exist?

These are things you must figure out.

GiantSpaceChinchilla Since: Oct, 2009
#11: Feb 25th 2011 at 8:41:05 PM

speaking of the Westermarck effect the wikipedia article linked to and mentioned the group child rearing practices of kibbutz.

Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#12: Feb 26th 2011 at 1:36:23 AM

They are live bearers, more mammalian than fish and alien, but not exactly to Starfish Alien levels. And a large part of the story is world building so I think love, sex, pair bonding should be adressed.

edited 28th Feb '11 4:59:38 AM by Zolnier

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#13: Feb 28th 2011 at 6:47:14 AM

Hey weird thought, how might this culture think of reproduction?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#14: Feb 28th 2011 at 12:05:44 PM

Well, if they're live bearers, then it's impossible to keep the mother, at least, from knowing which children are hers. Depending on mating habits, the mother may or may not know who the fathter is as well.

If you want to take the "raised communally" thing as your base and justify it as much as possible, I'd have them reproduce like fish; females lay unfertilized eggs, and males fertilize them later. The number of eggs should be low; IRL it can be in the thousands, but a sapient species would be way better at rearing their eggs than fish, so depending on how often an individual mer reproduces and how dangerous mer-life is, you might do anything from "dozens" to "one" per laying.

The way I see it, a bunch of females would lay their eggs in a given nest, and then a bunch of males would fertilize them. Then all the parents would collectively raise that nest. They couldn't be sure which specific kids were theirs, but they'd have a pretty good idea that at least some of them were. Kids from the same nest would probably consider themselves siblings and avoid creating a nest each other. If mers only mate with other mers their age (ie, there's a once-a-year "spawning" thing, and mers only mate within their year) then that should be enough to prevent inbreeding.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#15: Feb 28th 2011 at 4:37:15 PM

So would it be interesting if children and parents did no each other's identity's, but mostly didn't think of this as any reason for their parents to treat them differently from other members of the nest. Could that make them being live bearers and having this social structure more believable?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#16: Mar 1st 2011 at 11:47:06 AM

Well, parents not giving their kids preferential treatment isn't particularly believable from an evolutionary biology standpoint, though it works well as a cultural thing if you wanted to do it that way. In that case, I could see children being raised communially as an efficiency thing, with dedicated caregivers doing the actual raising.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#17: Mar 1st 2011 at 11:58:51 AM

This sounds similar to tribal societies who didn't have the luxury of separated family units as we do today. Most activities were based upon merit, that is, the best hunter would lead hunts. The best bowmaker made bows and taught the next generation in how to do so. Many of the women who farmed or foraged would also help one another care for their children. The more open the sharing of the parenting skills, the more communal it would be and the more muddied the relationships tend to be.

If your whole society were based upon separated communities there are several usual practices in anthropology that I know of (with my very small amount of knowledge about it):

  • Rules against marriage within the same tribe in order to promote diversity and linking communities
  • Rules about excluding marriage between tribes in order to consolidate wealth but leads to some level of inbreeding
  • Rules about festivities between a set of communities to promote inter-community relations

Zolnier The Odd Lad from A suspiciously dull shop Since: Apr, 2009
The Odd Lad
#18: Mar 2nd 2011 at 1:54:24 AM

So how might an underwater race handle infant care?

Life's Gonna Suck When You Grow Up... But Is It That Great Now?... Also I'm Skylark2 now.
SavageHeathen Pro-Freedom Fanatic from Somewhere Since: Feb, 2011
Pro-Freedom Fanatic
#19: Mar 2nd 2011 at 6:09:23 AM

Raising children communally was not uncommon, but children tended to be between 8 and 10 before being placed under the care of the whole tribe. It's easier to train young kids than to rear infants.

It helps horde cohesion, but weakens specific inter-family ties. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

edited 2nd Mar '11 7:29:28 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.
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