"People here sometimes differentiate between parents, but I have the feeling that Crafters might do so more. What's the difference between a primary and secondary parent?"

He has to pause and think about that for a moment.

The role of a primary parent shifts over a kid's childhood, is a thing, but for babies and toddlers the primary parent is the one they live with, who's making basically all the decisions about how their life is going to be because of that. That fades out over time as the kid learns to take on more things for themselves, but kids tend to default to going to their primary parents for help and advice into early teenagerhood, and it's good for them to have that consistent relationship - he can speak to that firsthand a bit; his mother died when he was twelve and he moved in with one of his aloparents, and it was fine in the long run, but he had a really rough couple years first and still has trouble with similar situations sometimes. The role of a secondary parent is less well defined and also more about the adult's experience than the child's; the main difference between a secondary parent and an adult in the community that the child happens to be friends with is that the secondary parent is personally invested in the child in a way the adult friend isn't, but that might not work out to any specific things the secondary parent actually does that other adults wouldn't, depending on the situation. If he was secondarily parenting a baby he'd probably wet nurse sometimes (if that's safe at his age and weight, which he'd want to check first), and watch them regularly during the day, and have them at his house overnight sometimes so that their primary parent was getting enough sleep to handle traveling, and of course make sure they had any things they needed since that's more difficult here, but he'd defer to the primary parent about things like their schedule or whether it was time to introduce them to different things, and he wouldn't expect to have them overnight most nights or to spend most of his time with them.

"Does a kid normally have exactly one primary parent and secondary parent? I ask because that sounds like a structure that a family here might have, but I think it's more common for a kid to have one or two primary parents and between zero and three secondary ones."

Kids pretty much always have exactly one primary parent, yeah; the territoriality instinct doesn't apply to kids or animals the same way it applies to places or things but it does really complicate the logistics of trying to coparent without a clear point person. The number of secondaries is much more variable, kids don't usually start with more than one or two - and often with none, he'll come back to that in a second - but they'll pick up more as they get to know people in a community, and most kids will end up with at least three or four by the time they're teenagers.

"Oh, I see. So the child picks their own secondary parents? Or the secondary parents pick the child?"

After toddlerhood it's mutual, if a kid isn't going to come to you for help or advice it's not exactly easy to give it - the primary parent might introduce the kid to some adult and encourage them to spend time together, but that's not a secondary parent relationship if that's all that's happening. It's different for really little kids because they bond so strongly with their caretakers, it's not really possible to just be friends with a baby if you're helping take care of them.

"That makes sense; are there any other kinds of formal roles in a child's life like that, or just the parents?"

Some people think of extended family like grandparents as a separate category, and that's arguably true, he hasn't been very involved with his grandkids in a day-to-day way but if he got a letter saying that one of them needed something he'd want to help.

"Do you think you'd want closer contact with your grandchildren if traveling didn't make that more difficult?"

Yeah, definitely. That's been one of the highlights of his visits with his kids, getting to spend time with the grandkids.

Þurvo asks a few more questions about his family, and then brings the topic back around to something he said earlier.

"You mentioned a while ago that children often don't start out with a secondary parent. There definitely are people here who raise their children as a solitary primary parent, but they often find that pretty challenging even with support from the community. What about Crafters makes raising a child like that more common, do you think?"

Well, he doesn't know enough about the locals to have a confident guess at the difference, yet, but crafting and the territoriality instinct both push in that direction - especially with a new baby the crafting is vital, he has no idea how to make that work without having everything prepared so that you can give them as much attention as they need; it's still a little rough with that - sleeping on a baby's schedule is kind of awful - but not too bad.

There's also a biological component to the solo parenting; Crafters who can bear children don't need recent contact with someone to sire them, that's basically unheard of in mammals but it looks like someone genecrafted that capability in at some point. It's not especially uncommon for a Crafter to get up to whatever teenage nonsense they get up to as a teenager and then go off and claim a territory and never interact with another adult Crafter and still have three or four children over eight or twelve years.

Þurvo blinks. Right. He's an alien.

... it's really amazingly coincidental that he looks so human. It's easy to forget; the telepathy just seems natural after a while.

"Huh. Yeah, we don't have that, although I can see why people would want it. It would be nice to become pregnant only once you'd been able to prepare for it. Do people often wait for specific times to have a baby? We've found that babies born in the spring are slightly healthier, although I couldn't guess if the same is true of Crafter babies."

He hasn't heard of time of year making a difference to the baby's health but that might just be that nobody has noticed yet. There are some trends - lots of Crafters do try to avoid timing things to give birth in the summer and early fall, just because being heavily pregnant when it's hot out is pretty miserable - but it's basically just personal preference and when someone feels ready. They have noticed that babies with younger bearers tend to be healthier, up to a point, so Crafters who want kids do often try to get on that sooner rather than later - it was a factor in why he started when he did, though not a major one.

"We've noticed the same thing," Þurvo agrees. She has a few more questions about his books, and then she reaches the wrapping-up point of the interview.

"I think we've covered most of the questions I had prepared for you. Is there anything that you particularly want to say to people here?"

Just that he's happy to be here and looking forward to getting to know their species better. Oh, and if they want input into what the species is called on his world they'll want to figure out what they want before he writes to too many more people about them.

"I'm sure people will have lots of opinions on that!" she remarks. "Thank you for speaking with me, Traveler. This was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay."

He expects to, it's been good so far! Does she want a souvenir before he gets back to his guide?

"Oh, yes please! Anything would be good, but if you could make a heavy spinning cube that is indestructible and silent, I would like that."

She fishes around in her pocket and holds up one such cube, to demonstrate what she means. It's a cube of some silver metal with rounded corners. Two opposite corners have been separated from the main body of the cube to form an axle, so that when you hold it by those corners you can spin the rest of the cube around them. She spins it, and it clearly has both lots of angular momentum and a slightly annoying whistling noise from friction between the axle and the main body of the cube.

Sure, he can do that. It'll be easier if he can hold the one she has for a second to check the weight and friction. (He'll make a quick copy for himself, while he's at it.)

She leans over and sets it on the little ledge on his walker.

He examines it, then takes some crafting material from the stash by his feet and constructs a quick series of tools to make a cube of about the same shape, then separates out the corners and central axle and gives it a spin, frowns at it for a moment, spins it again, nods, and makes a tiny copy with material from one of the tools.

Does she want any aesthetic changes? (It's currently a slightly lighter shade of silver than the original.)

She considers the question.

"It's silver because that's just the color the metal is; could you make it rainbow-shiney, like it's been ..."

She flips through the dictionary looking for a suitable word, but "anodized" doesn't seem to have been included in the vocabulary Traveler shared.

She puts in a picture of an anodized steel plate instead.

"Like this?"

Ooh, that's pretty. Yeah, he can do that.

"It's a pattern that metals naturally make when you do something involving tiny-lightning to them. I'm not a specialist, so I don't know the details. But it's really pretty, yeah! I have some spoons at home that have been decorated like that."

When he finishes the fidget, she takes it back and thanks him once again, and then starts packing up her recording equipment.