Making dowries fully refundable (but Bride Price not) in the event of divorce might be the tradition among some Orlanthi. That puts the burden of making the marriage work onto the husband but they're more likely to wander, being men and all. :)
Do women litterally take their wealth to the grave with them or do their dowries eventually get divided among their daughters, if any?
Advertising one's offspring's eligibility for marriage among your neighboring steads or tulas sounds like a job for my favorite overlooked cults Donandar and Uleria. Who better to sing the praises of your doe-eyed, sylph-like daughter (and describe her fine dowry) or your deer-swift, able-to-plow-from-Dawn-to-Dusk son far and wide than a bard? If the bardic approach don't suit (or you can't afford the price) an offering left at the local Uleria shrine with a similar description of the young person could be viewed by interested parties and the word spread that way.
(A side note: I'm beginning to think more and more that in many places Uleria and Chalana Arroy shrines are the same place just with two doors and room for the Vorians as well.)
Keeping the Babies You Make:
Maybe it's just because I don't like the idea of infanticide but I can think of a lot of reasons why you don't leave even extra babies laying around where someone might find them. Chaos of all sorts, Broos especially (ick), Tusk Riders, Trollkin, Tapping Sorcerers, Morokanths, Ghosts, Wraiths, and on and on. If self-deluding exposure is out that means you have to knock the baby on the head yourself and I'd like to think that anyone I'd play with would reject that out of hand. Frankly, I think famine is much overrated anyway, perhaps because I like the subject of Food in Glorantha so much.
I suspect that the supposedly high infant mortality rate peaks between the ages of, say, 7-13 when children are most vunerable to the hazzards of growing up in a World Full of Monsters. ("Don't you say that out our Nigel, even if he was ate by that Jack-o-Bear last year!")
Gary R Switzer
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