Family in Barrayar

The Barrayaran family is the social minimum unit, and it is based on the nuclear families model, although with several features of the extended family.
The average Barrayaran family extends beyond the immediate family, consisting of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all living nearby or in the same household: it is regarded as a positive feature the fact of being capable of living together, especially far away from major urban centres. These families include, in one household, near relatives in addition to a immediate family, especially if the elderly parents move in with children due to old age.
The Barrayaran familial attitude is underlined even by dances: Barrayaran dances are strictly male-female partner steps. The Barrayaran society is based upon, at all its levels, on family and personal connections: merit is sought, but the social structure is made up of family ties, both for the prole of the Caravanserai and for the government of a backcountry District. An individual without a family, or son of a prostitute is relegated to society margins. However, a more individualistic approach is spreading, due to both military service, which is an opportunity for redemption, and to the new galactic values, spread among the city middle-upper class people.

Marriage

The Barrayaran culture inherits Western and Russian values about marriage. It is considered the most intimate of human relationships, essentially a gift, and a high-valued institution; therefore, civil laws recognize marriage as having social and political statuses. On Barrayar, the Bride and Groom marry themselves: the minimum is Bride, Groom and witnesses.
Because the low population, marriage is highly honoured and affirmed: although it is not a strict and binding duty, it is suggested that it is appropriate for everyone. In order to keep the certainty of the lineage, the sex is considered to be reserved for marriage, especially within the Vor class, although in recent decades moral surveillance has been relaxed.
While shifting towards an egalitarian view of the family, especially in urban centres but also in some country areas, the Barrayaran traditional culture sees the family as rooted on a complementary mood: the husband is charged of the headship and the wife of a intelligent, willing co-operation.

Family authority and responsibilities

Barrayaran traditionalists held to a hierarchical structure between husband and wife. Men and women are considered to have different gender-specific roles that allow each to complement the other. While the husband and wife are of equal worth before the community, husbands and wives are given different functions and responsibilities that are based on gender, and that male leadership is ordained so that the husband is always the senior authority figure. The Tradition presents the Emperor being the head of the Count; the Count is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and parents are the head of their children. However, the inferior is not the servant of the superior, but a companion, so that obedience is wanting in neither honour nor dignity.

Extended family

Since some decades ago, the most popular multi-generational household have been consisting of grandparents moving in with an adult child's family, usually for care-giving reasons. The workload is shared among the members: roles of women are viewed as to be primarily focused on that of housewife and this usually involves cooking, cleaning, and organizing for the entire family. The patriarch of the family lays down some rules and arbitrates disputes while other senior members of the household babysit infants in case their mother is working. Due to the fact that families have the exclusive responsibility of raising and educating children, at least until the beginning of mandatory schools, senior members are also responsible in teaching the younger children their basic notions, such as tongue, manners, and etiquette. Grandparents often take the leading roles due to the fact that they have the most experience with parenting and maintaining a household, although this changes when they are retired, due to the lesser role in financially maintaining of the household. In more traditionalist regions, as well as within the Vor class, often parents live with the first-born and his spouse, as well as the children of both, while other children leave the house or remain in it unmarried.

Orphans

Barrayaran orphans are mostly raised by their close relatives: parents' siblings or orphans' grandparents, or even cousins. If an orphan is without family, each District has its own orphanage system, which raise them until the age of twenty. Also military orphanages do exist, and provide a steady flow of career servicemen. If an abandoned child is found, it is considered as being an orphan, and then sent to local orphanage. Orphanage children are trained to get a job as soon as possible, but for those are suited for, the university is District or State funded: however, many of them choose the Imperial Service as their new family.

Abortion and unwilled pregnancy

Since the coming of Nexus technology, the moral/legal duty to kill mutant babies and to practice abortion on mutant or deformed foetuses has been progressively eroded; nowadays, with under-population problems still existing, abortion on Barrayar is everywhere illegal unless it occurs as the result of a medical intervention performed to save the life of the mother. The availability of abortion services can be even more restricted in the absence of a readily available method of determining the circumstances in which an abortion might be lawfully obtained. Laws provide for a woman's right to an abortion if her life is at risk, including from suicide. The illegality of abortion is further strenghtened by the avalaibility of the uterine replicator, the advance that allows unborn human fetuses to be gestated in vitro, rather than in a woman's body. The right to travel in order to obtain a free-use uterine replicator is granted by several Imperial laws.
On Barrayar, genetic cleaning is a major use of the replicator. Defects in the zygote can be looked for and eliminated prior to birth, removing any genetic problems, such as diseases or inherited traits.
Over the last century, the use of uterine replicators increased on Barrayar, coming to be a technology available also to lower classes, with all law systems providing at least one replicator every fifty inhabitants.

Terminology

Barrayaran lexicon includes a variety of terms related to the family, each varying according to the particular language spoken. However, there are several common concepts:

• Father: a male parent
• Mother: a female parent
• Son: a male child of the parents
• Daughter: a female child of the parents
• Brother: a male child of the same parents
• Sister: a female child of the same parents
• Grandfather: father of a father or mother
• Grandmother: mother of a mother or father
• Cousins: two people that share the same grandparents
• Grandfather: a parent's father
• Grandmother: a parent's mother
• Grandson: a child's son
• Granddaughter: a child's daughter

For collateral relatives, more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family:

• Uncle: father's brother, mother's brother, father's sister's husband, mother's sister's husband
• Aunt: father's sister, mother's sister, father's brother's wife, mother's brother's wife
• Nephew: brother's son, sister's son, husband's brother's son, husband's sister's son, wife's brother's son, wife's sister's son
• Niece: brother's daughter, sister's daughter, husband's brother's daughter, husband's sister's daughter, wife's brother's daughter, wife's sister's daughter

Such a system assumes that the mother's husband has also served as the biological father. The system refers to a child who shares only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or "half-sister". For children who do not share biological or adoptive parents in common, it is used the term "stepbrother" or "stepsister" to refer to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological parents marries one of the other child's biological parents. Any person who marries the parent of that child becomes the "stepmother" or "stepfather".