>She'd like children sometime, but "not if it means the life of the loom-house
>in some man's stead". Despite Jane's "it takes a clan" theory of communal
>child-raising, which theoretically provides Vingans with the option of having
>("fatherless"?) children raised within the stead, I'm still getting my head
>around the stead-politics of this. How well do I respect the younger wives
>who've married into our stead? Who's particularly looking out for my kids
>while I'm off ploughing/patrolling/returning the axe my Wind-Lord father
>"borrowed" from the Babeester Gor temple in Nochet?
Who's looking after the kids of a working mother today? Usually either relatives or paid childcare. Now heortling society doesn't have the financial structure for paid childcare, it uses gifting instead. When you bring your crop in you'll gift those who looked after your children with a share of it. There will be an elaborate set of rules for working out what a fair gift is in various circumstances. And a career Vingan is probably going to have to be more generous than usual to avoid being regarded as looking down on women's work.
Actually I'm a bit dubious about Vingans ploughing because with an ox or horse plough it requires a lot of weight and physical strength.
>There are reasons for forming long-term liaisons with other people who are
>slightly outside the mainstream, but you have to be creative to fit this into
>clan life.
>
>There are times when it feels like you're devoting your life to protecting
>something that you can never truly be a part of. There are times when the
>future looks lonely: what happens to old Vingans? For that matter, though,
>what happens to old Orlanthi who don't have children? The stead still looks
>out for Old Uncle Ulf, but where does he fit in the scheme of things?
I think you're seeing this through modern eyes. Old Uncle Ulf is still a productive part of the stead, he may just be sitting by the fire telling stories and whittling toys or knife handles but he's a part of the community. In such a society the old do what they are still capable of and their relatives accept their limitations.
Certainly a character who neglects relationships risks being abandoned when they're old but that's unusual among heortlings.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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