Determined Homesteaders Children

Basic Information

Determined Homesteaders tend to have a lot of kids. In the real American West, they'd have several more than is typically depicted in the movies (because child actors are so trying). So, in a realistic game, it's gonna pretty common for a homesteader family to have 4 or 5 kids. Sometimes more.

There's several reasons they have so many kids:

• More kids means more people to carry on the family name and work the family farm.
• When they get old enough, the Homestead Act of 1862 will let them claim the empty plot right next door. Look, the size of the family farm just doubled!
• A lot of people die in the Wild West, so you may end up adopting your deceased cousin's children.
• There ain't no TV, and nothing much fer you and the misses to do at night (after your existing kids have gone to sleep).

Sources

Bibliography

1. TV Tropes Wiki

Game and Story Use

• Similar statements can be made about peasants in the dark ages - the more kids the merrier.
• Gaggles of children make nicely flavorful NPC Extras to fill the backdrop.
  • Or, an interesting moving terrain feature. A shoot-out near a one-room school-house would ratchet up the drama quite nicely.
• It's perfectly in-genre for one of the local kids to become the Kid Sidekick of a PC hero.