case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2012-06-05 06:42 pm

[ SECRET POST #1981 ]


⌈ Secret Post #1981 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.


__________________________________________________



16.


__________________________________________________



17.


__________________________________________________



18.


__________________________________________________



19.


__________________________________________________



20.


__________________________________________________



21.


__________________________________________________



22.


__________________________________________________






Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 68 secrets from Secret Submission Post #283.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
velvet_mace: (Default)

[personal profile] velvet_mace 2012-06-06 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
You are right. If you select for gender (though here I think if you are selecting for gender, why are you allowing twins at all?) you can pull the ratio down to half of all female children being designated breeders instead of 2/3rds. But that still means that 33 percent of your society (all female) is this underclass that is later punished for the crime of making the next generation possible by being sent to the most menial labor without the benefit of the happy family unit. The number of births is still a problem. You have to factor in some attrition for accidents and whatnot. And this means that your basic family unit should be three not two. One male and two female, one of which will ultimately become a parent and the other will become a breeder.

And having twice as many female children than male children aught to have some implications in society.

(Anonymous) 2012-06-06 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, my explanation's not a great one. I was actually thinking Birthmothers were chosen for having no above-average skill. There aren't a whole lot of jobs in the Giver's world, and Laborers are absolutely vital. A lot depends on Laborers, who deliver food, do the physical work of building, and probably tons of other things like garbage disposal, gardening, food preparation, and housework. You don't need a ton of doctors, lawyers, and firefighters if the society is small enough. You do need someone to do all the grunt work. I wouldn't call that punishment any more than I would call working in the service industry or a shipyard punishment. It's not glamorous, but it's a necessary job (I've worked in the food service industry for several years and there are definitely people who make it a livelihood). The default, then, is Birthmother/Laborer. The girl who is chosen to be a Birthmother in Jonas' year was noted to be dim-witted, iirc.

I was thinking that the families that only care for one child would almost always be assigned a girl. There's certainly still the issue of too many children, too few parents in that case, but that problem already exists with the family units that only care for one child.