====== Overbrooding Syndrome ======

Overbrooding syndrome is a psychological condition characterized by a hypertrophied parenting instinct. While it's stereotypically associated with female empty-nesters, it can manifest in either gender and occur at any age after reaching maturity.



Before First Contact, overbrooders simply bought an inadvisably large number of pets to fill the void left by their grown litter, or else complained to their grown pups that they never visit or call them. After discovering humans, however, overbrooders found a new outlet for their unhealthy obsession: adopted human children.



Overbrooders adopt from less scrupulous adoption agencies, usually several kids at a time. Most overbrooding yinrih are not very familiar with human needs, only that humans mature comparatively fast. All Focus governments, with the exception of, you guessed it, the Spacer Confederacy, have mechanisms in place to prevent overbrooders from sneaking into the system, but there are ways around this.



From the human kids' perspective, they have an effectively immortal helicopter parent. It's also hard for humans raised by overbrooders to integrate into human society. They often don't speak human language very well, and strange pidgins consisting of Commonthroat grammar on top of human phonology have been documented.



While overbrooders aren't actively abusive, they are almost always overprotective of their "furless pups." Their lack of knowledge about humans can lead to unfortunate cases of unintentional neglect. Children adopted by overbrooders almost always have trouble getting enough sleep, as their adoptive parents usually don't understand that it's both normal and necessary for humans to just turn off every night and reboot eight hours later.



Ironically, overbrooders who go the human route almost never have more than one "litter", as the grief at losing all their adopted children in a mere eight or nine decades sours them on adopting again.



The vast majority of yinrih seeking to adopt human children are much more well-informed, and are driven by a healthy concern for the welfare of otherwise unwanted, abandoned, or abused human kids. There are orders of Wayfarers who act as adoptive childermoots for human children, and do their best to give them as human an upbringing as a barrel of monkey foxes can possibly provide.



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