"That doesn't really sound like an argument that they're bad for the children."

"Yes, the Osirian government doesn't believe that they're bad for the sort of child who gets abandoned to them or they would not run them."

"How's Osirion avoid the sort of problems Korva was talking about on the first day — uh, I guess you weren't here—" She looks at Korva.

"Sorry, which problem? Just the thing where they're horrible? I'd expect if very few children are abandoned then it isn't very hard to take good care of the ones that are, since it's way less work."

"I think that's the key, yes."

"Yeah, that's the one I meant, sorry if I asked that badly."

"If we can have orphanages run by Good churches, we can trust that they will take good care of them; or if they cannot because there are too many and their resources too few, to say so and let us know of the problem. We cannot have that trust with the general public, not today, and not for years to come; if mothers and aunts and neighbors are being neglectful because they do not care about the children enough to ensure their welfare, and I think we must assume that in great numbers they will be, we will never hear of it. The children will suffer from that negligence, those being paid will pocket profits as if they were taking good care, and it will continue out of sight. That is why I am more optimistic about paying for better orphanages than about giving stipends for mothers."

"The resources are too few. I am letting you know about that problem right now. And the thing I do about it is I guilt people into adopting the orphans. Even a chance at something like a family is better than those places."

"The ones we have now are terrible. No one here disputes that, after what we heard from Delegate Tallandria last week - I have scribed copies if our new members want to read it, but I will warn you that it is long and very unpleasant reading. But so are all too many of our families. And the alternative is not, usually, a family. If a family wants to adopt children, that would still be encouraged. It is a mother without a husband, and without close family she can trust, because few women have that even before they have a child out of wedlock. Without neighbors she can trust, because few Chelish people can trust their neighbors at all. I do not think money can fix any of that; time can, I hope, but not money. I am optimistic that money can produce good orphanages that can take good care of children, while their mothers work or otherwise; in Osirion it appears it can. It is not the solution to all our problems, and we will still need to work on encouraging there to be fewer children abandoned this way and more marriages and families. But for the problem of what to do for the children without a father once they exist, I think trying to fix the orphanages to provide good childcare is better for them than a pension for their mothers."

Headshake headshake.

"I don't know. I think we should work on improving the orphanages too, obviously. But right now, a child with just a mother is still usually better off than an orphan. I like the idea of giving compensation to whoever is actually raising the child, whether that's the mother or the orphanage or someone else. ....though, now that I think of it, it probably will result in some people adopting kids and then neglecting them for the sake of a one time payment, but - ugh. I'm not actually sure that's worse than what we do now."

"I'd say most likely it isn't, but it's still worse than what we'd be doing if we gave the orphanages the money and supervision to care for orphans and day-stay children well. I have faith."

"Do you also have money."

"If we can bring down the number of children who need it, we have it already. And the alternative needs just as much money."

"So, I don't know what the orphanages in Osirion and Andoran are like, maybe they're way better than Korva's orphanage, I've never been. 

But my mother didn't have a husband, and we weren't living anywhere near any of her family, and as far as I know the other people around weren't unusually trustworthy — I could be wrong about that, I don't really know how trustworthy people in most places are. And there's definitely some things she did wrong, but I don't remember ever almost dying because of something she did, and she was definitely way way better than the orphanages we have now.

And maybe I'm just not imagining well enough, maybe there's things Good people do when they're caring for children that I haven't thought of, but at least where I come from, people mostly didn't leave their kids in dangerous situations by accident? Like, I don't know the right words to explain it, but even if someone's an Asmodean, that doesn't make them stupid, they can still... do things that they want? And so if they want their kid alive — which they do, if they didn't care about their kid being alive they'd've smothered them, or maybe left them at an orphanage if it's in the cities — they can still watch their kid, even if they're Evil. Even if someone's really really Evil they can still figure out that it's a bad idea to let their kid crawl into a fire.

And I do think it's harder to find someone who'll definitely do a good job of watching them, but — back home the way it worked out was, if someone had done a really bad job of watching the kids and other people found out, then they'd kick her out of the group of women who were watching each other's kids, and then she'd have no one to watch her kid while she was doing her work and she'd get fired. I don't know if bringing back the daycares would be better or worse than that, if you had Good priests running them, but I think — maybe I'm wrong, maybe people where you're from are a lot worse than people where I'm from — I think even if a woman grew up under Asmodeus she can probably make sure children she's watching don't literally die, if she's trying to.

...probably that would stop applying if we started paying people to adopt random kids, I do think Korva's right about that. Maybe if you were giving them the things that they needed to take care of a kid, rather than just money."

"I expect that most arrangements like that only have someone kicked out when they cause permanent harm, because most Chelish mothers are not very attentive to anything less out of their sight, and that significant but impermanent harm happens quite a lot, because most Chelish women being asked to do it do not care enough to attend and prevent it. I think everywhere I've seen in my duchy except my ancestral county and one of its neighbors on the shore, I would not trust my toddlers to anything like that, if I had to choose. Death from negligence is just the most obvious harm that is impossible to ignore."

But he does note a point in favor of 'Ferrer isn't useless' in his mental book.

Nod. She's not really sure of all the ways people could hurt kids, accidentally or on purpose, but that explanation seems a lot more plausible than people just accidentally letting kids crawl into fires for no reason just because they're Evil.

She looks at Korva. "...How many Good priests would we actually need to have enough of them for all the orphanages and daycares? If we assume it's just the ones that were already around before the war, and then also if we assume we're adding a bunch more daycares outside the cities."

"I couldn't guess how many orphanages in the country. It would have to be in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I know the money is about six million, and that's with skeleton crews and no daycare."

"...the paladin assizes are supposed to have downtime one month in four. This is an extraordinary amount. Because otherwise we fall at elevated rates; it's morally injurious work. Sower, are you concerned that it would be like that for clerics trying to run orphanages?"

"If, what, you made me work at one? Deadeye's empty quiver, I don't know, but you'd have to make me."

"Uh, Korva, just to be clear, did you mean thousands of orphanages or thousands of priests? And if you meant the first thing how many priests would each orphanage need to stop having the problems you were talking about?"

"Lay priests of Sarenrae run them in Andoran, for the most part, one per orphanage for smaller ones; some other churches and some empowered priests supervising, intermittently except at the biggest ones. I can't possibly beg for them to import enough for this, but they would have less problem with caring for children during the day than keeping them, if anything, and that's what we expect to increase this way. I don't really understand the Sower's objection to day care, but I wouldn't expect it to extend to any Good church but Erastil."

"I walk into one of those places and the only thing in my head is to get every one of those kids out of there."

"A number of different churches run orphanages in Osirion but I share the sentiment that -  inasmuch as they're not a horror it is only because it is exceptionally rare for anyone to need resort to them. I would not be excited about any program to have them play a significant role in the rearing of a nation's children."

"I meant orphanages. I figure one priest per orphanage is probably enough? You'd need to hire other staff, definitely, but I don't see how you could possibly hire entirely clerics. I don't think you could even hire enough for every orphanage to have one, but certainly not more than that. The current cost is with lots of the labor coming from young women who don't have any other skills, besides maybe domestic service ones. When we offered daycare a lot of the workers were women who themselves had children and kept them in the daycare while they worked. That's what I did. Then you'd have a housekeeper and some nursemaids who lived there full time, and have the older children help at night.

- Conde, do you have the same concerns about daycare if all the women working there themselves have children at the daycare? It wasn't required, but it was common, before we fired most of them."