RoughRomanMemes

Explanation: A rare bit of OC from me, which is why its visual design is so subpar!

Roman auxiliaries were noncitizen soldiers recruited from the provinces and from foreign populations. At the end of their service, they were granted citizenship for themselves, whomever they took as a wife, and their kids. A pretty good deal!

However, around 140 AD, military diplomas discharging auxiliary troops have a notable change - they only grant citizenship to children born after the soldier's discharge, whereas previously all children born to the auxiliary and his (de facto) wife were given citizenship. The debate over this change muses over several possibilities, none conclusive. Suggestions that it was to limit the number of children born to auxiliaries contradicts general Roman policies encouraging high birth rates even in provincial populations, while the notion that it was to prevent 'barbarization' of the citizenry runs into the issue of why they were granting full citizenship to provincials and their wives in the first place.

But one particularly compelling hypothesis, though, is that the new limitation was instituted because auxiliaries were claiming the children of friends and family as their own, either out of benevolence or in exchange for payment, giving those children a sudden, much high social status without the need for their own father to go through ~25 years of military service! And since it takes a village to raise a family, who's going to raise eyebrows if little Gaius Germanson spends an awful lot of time with his 'aunt and uncle'?

Given the Roman concern with 'proper' grants of citizenship, this fits both the legalistic nature of the Imperial Roman system and does not suggest any motives which are contradictory to other established policies.