Duty Children (Hive England)

*This article is about the Hive England's Duty Children program. For Global Hive's programs, see Duty Children.*

## Description

The program to allow those with especially valuable abilities to have more than two children.

## First Mention

### Books:

Borderline

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## Description

### Planned Adoptions

The program selects suitable adoptive couples from levels 11 to 19 and offers them the chance to adopt a child.

Adoption records are kept as restricted information so the adoptive parents rarely tell anyone that the child is adopted so that when the child come out of lottery as a level 1 they get all of the glory of having a level 1 child.

### Janet's Q&A

Janet covers more information on this topic during an answer posted at her website

*The Joint Hive Treaty rules on duty child programmes have been upgraded over the years, so by now all conceivable situations are covered in the consent stage of entering the duty child programme. If a participant in the duty child programme dies, their specified consents still hold, and some of those consents will directly relate to the situation of their death. For example, Claire opted to designate the other genetic parent of each of her children at the appropriate future point. In the event of her death though, the Hive could choose from the already designated genetic parents*.

* *If a participant in the duty child programme decides to move Hive, then their outstanding duty child programme commitments move with them, but some consents will be altered appropriately*.
* *I don’t think the specific details of Miranda’s mother’s situation are likely to be a significant spoiler for future books. When Miranda’s mother entered the duty child programme, she’d had no interest at all in the resulting children, and let the default consents apply. That meant the Hive could have chosen a genetic parent with no prior children through the duty child programme to have six duty children with Miranda’s mother*.
* *However, the Hive had spent years pressuring Koloman into agreeing to enter the duty child programme, only to be frustrated by him limiting his consent to one child. When Koloman married Miranda’s mother, the Hive grabbed the chance to have five particularly valuable duty children from the pair of them. Miranda’s mother’s consent had been given before her mental reset. Koloman’s recent mental reset meant his consent had to be approved by Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. Once they confirmed he was in a genuine caring relationship with his partner though, he only needed a minimal level of informed consent to agree to be the co-genetic parent of her duty children*.

*Joint Hive Treaty rules only allow duty children to be adopted if no close relatives wish to raise them. Since Koloman and Miranda’s mother had been traded from another Hive, there obviously weren’t any close relatives in Hive England questioning their competence and arguing they could offer the children a better home*.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/fun-extras/hive-future-questions Janet Edwards says:
November 8, 2023 at 1:15 pm)

## Summaries

### Adversary

With the New Year festival's emphasis on children, Amber continues to be stressed over the idea of duty children so she asks Lucas if they could work out a provisional plan for them, something that would be revisited later when they were ready.

They agree that six duty children, two years apart would probably work for them, but no more than that and that they would raise them not send them out for adoptions. They both feel that they aren't ready to be parents yet.

## References

### Bibliography

* https://janetedwards.com
* Edwards, Janet. *Defender (Hive Mind 2)* (2017). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Borderline (Hive Mind 4)* (2019). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition
* Edwards, Janet. *Adversary (Hive Mind 5)* (2023). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition