“the production of thread and fabric is a tremendous task, consuming vast amounts of time and work, and therefore, issues of fertility, birthing, and parenting are impacted directly by that demand for labor.”
“When you think about your worldbuilding, ask yourself: what does the society I’m building value in terms of the most vulnerable people, the very young and very old, and how are the people who care for them treated?”
“Do infants stay with their parents, as a biologically related nursing pair? Is cross-nursing between families common or strange? Are there wet-nurses, whose sole job is breastfeeding babies? If infants are sent to wet-nurses, why?”
“Is a baby’s and/or nursing parent’s value inherent as a person, or are they commodified as pawns/cogs, in which case birth is prioritized, breastfeeding is deprioritized, and natural fertility suppression is intentionally broken. In what ways does your world support breastfeeding parent-child pairs, and if it doesn’t, why not?”
“the effort to keep the clothing next to the skin clean is a constant, like washing hands and face and body folds. This ties into the textile threads, because washing one’s body and clothes is 100% part of life.”
“How do people in your world deal with their waste water?”
“What do people use to clean and dry their bodies and clothing?”
“Where do people wash? How far do they have to take the dirty things in order to get them clean? Is washing a specialized fabric-related job?”
“Is washing the body or clothing considered private or communal? What are the taboos and traditions around washing?”
“How do the people in your imagined world handle routine infection and common injury?”
“Who has access to medical care? How does the world you imagine handle large scale epidemics? Could you maybe help combat this one?”