Children

Children are added by the Biotech DLC. They are smaller, slower, and less capable of work when compared to adult pawns, but gain skills as they age.

Acquisition

Children can be obtained via several different methods:

Naturally, through pregnancy or surrogacy.
Artificially, through growth vats.
Purchasing them from slavers.
Kidnapping them from other settlements.
Receiving them from quests.

Natural pregnancy

Pawns have a chance to get pregnant when they initiate lovin'. A pawn's chance of getting impregnated can be seen by checking their fertility stat. This stat is affected by a variety of factors, such as age and genes. For baseline humans without fertility-modifying genes, both men and women start becoming fertile after age 14; women's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 20-28, then drops steadily from 100% to 0% at age 50, while men's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 18-50, then starts dropping before reaching 0% at age 90.

Female Fertility

Male Fertility

You can further increase pregnancy odds by opening a pawn's social tab and choosing to try for pregnancy (x4 chance) or try avoid pregnancy (x0.25 chance).

Pregnancy lasts for 18 days, broken into three 6 day trimesters. The pregnant pawn will gain penalties to movement, manipulation, and hunger rate, increasing each trimester. They also occasionally gain mood buffs or debuffs due to hormonal induced mood swings.

Note that Pawns in the character selection menu can begin the game already pregnant.

It is impossible for a mother that is lactating to have another child under any circumstances, even via surrogacy.

Birth

The player will receive two notifications before birth: one several days before the birth, and another when the mother enters labor. Once labor begins, the birthing procedure can be initiated by clicking on the mother and selecting the "Begin birth" option. This allows the player to select the participating pawns, much like a ritual from Ideology. Presence of a skilled doctor and loved ones at the birth improves the probability of positive outcomes. Once the procedure begins, all participants will move towards a bed (or sleeping spot), preferentially one designated as a medical bed.

The progress of labor can be tracked in the mother's health tab. Each successive stage of labor results in an increasing amount of pain, quickly incapacitating the pawn. Once birth is complete, the baby will appear on an adjacent tile, and the mother will be incapacitated by exhaustion for up to a full day. At this point, a pawn with the Childcare work enabled can be instructed to either move the baby to a safe space, or to deliver it to the mother for breastfeeding.

The baby can be born healthy, sickly, or die during birth. There is also a chance that the mother can die during childbirth. This is impacted by the quality of the room, the cleanliness, the quality of the bed, the quality of the doctor and if loved ones are around (i.e. The father).

Pawns that successfully give birth then lactate and can feed their child milk. After 10 days of not breastfeeding a child, they cease to lactate.

Artificial pregnancy

To create children artificially you need a growth vat and to have researched fertility procedures. Active vats must be given a constant supply of nutrition to ensure survival of the fetus.

Then with the following procedure

Performing an operation on a female pawn to extract an ovum (can be a prisoner or slave).
Selecting ovum and setting a male colonist to fertilize (can be a slave, but not a prisoner).
Planting the embryo into the growth vat by either selecting the growth vat or the embryo.

Time taken until birth is accelerated to only 9 days.

Post-birth, child growth can continue to be accelerated inside the growth vat up and until a pawn turns 18. However, they will not accrue progress on growth tiers whilst inside, leading to worse options during growth moments.

Children in grown vats age 20x as fast as normal children.

Surrogacy

When Fertility procedures is researched an ovum can be extracted from a female pawn, fertilized by a male pawn to produce an embryo This embryo can be placed inside a female pawn who will become pregnant.

If the mother with embryo is not the one who supplied the ovum they will be the pawn's birth mother.

The pregnancy part is largely the same as a natural pregnancy ^{[Not thoroughly checked, quick devmode run to write this section]}.

Development

Children naturally age four times faster than adults do, so in one year, they can go from a 4 to an 8 year-old. Once they are 18, they'll become an adult. Before then, you'll probably want to give them the skills to be capable adults. Although they can perform most tasks for any skills, they start at very low skill levels, with few passions. Luckily, they have several ways to develop these over time. If children are taught well, then they will progress through growth tiers, and they will gain new traits and passions during several growth moments, which come at age 7, 10, and 13. This works through a new need for children--Learning. Viewed in the needs tab, you can see what learning-related activities a child wants to do next–the options are skydreaming, radio talking, floor drawing, nature running, work watching, and lesson taking. When children are scheduled to do Anything or Recreation, they will fulfill these needs, although they need the participation of an adult to accomplish work watching or lesson taking. With a fulfilled learning need, children will raise their growth score (shown at the bottom of the screen when a child is selected). Their score can pass through 8 tiers of learning, and each will grant more rewards during a child's growth moment. Tiers give you more flexibility in choosing a child's next trait and allow you to give them passions. Once a growth moment has passed, the child's growth tiers will reset to 0, and you'll need to keep them learning to gain more rewards.

Growth Tiers and Rewards
Tier	Points	Traits	Passion
0	0	1 from 1 options	-
1	30	1 from 2 options	-
2	55	1 from 3 options	-
3	80	1 from 4 options	-
4	100	1 from 4 options	1 from 1 options
5	120	1 from 4 options	1 from 2 options
6	135	1 from 4 options	1 from 3 options
7	150	1 from 4 options	2 from 4 options
8	162	1 from 6 options	3 from 6 options

Growth moments

Children experience growth moments at 7, 10, and 13. At 18, they become adults. When a child hits the right biological age, a notification will pop up that allows you to choose new traits and passions, if you have been raising them well. A random assortment of choices will be presented, which you can choose from, aided by a window showing the child's Bio and Health stats. If you realize you want to choose the traits later, you can dismiss this window and choose again, within 48 hours of the birthday.

Age 3

Now your baby is a child! They can now walk and talk, and do activities for skills like melee, shooting, or social. Their Play need is also replaced with a new Learning need.

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
-	✓	-	✓	✓	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	✓	-

Age 7

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-	-	✓	-

Age 10

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-

Age 13

When a child turns 13, you will receive the notification: "Child" became an adult. They are not full adults yet, but now wear adult clothing, dropping their too-small child's clothes if wearing any. They will also gain the ability to smith and research. Finally, their Learning need is replaced with the Recreation need. Unfortunately, this is also when some pre-existing health conditions take effect, like go-juice dependency.

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Learning

Floor drawing

Children draw pictures on the floor in various places. This does not require any additional supplies and can occur on carpet. The drawings can be cleaned up the same way as any other dirt.

Lessons

The child(ren) and an adult sit together at a desk and the adult instructs the child in a random, currently usable (e.g., when age 4 this can be shooting, melee, or social) skill. The child's skill level goes up. The speed at which the child learns can be increased by up to 60% by adding up to 3 blackboards near the school desks at which the lesson takes place. Additionally, it also trains the adult's social skill.

Nature running

Children run around outside, similar to the adult "Going for a walk" activity.

Sky dreaming

Children lay on the ground and watch the sky much like adults that are cloud watching.

Work watching

Children that are work watching follow an adult who is working while the adult does standard work.

Growth acceleration

Child growth can be accelerated if a pawn is younger then 18 at the cost of long term development using a growth vat.