How to get rid of unwanted children without making the dwarves unhappy?

I am experimenting a lot with the game right now and one thing I have noticed is that child dwarves are extremely useless. They just throw parties and interrupt others.

It's obvious they need to be sent to a better place.

My current solution is to dig a 2x2x8 well with a bridge on top, use a burrow to get the children onto the bridge and then just pull the lever. Most of them immediately die, some of them need a few months to meet their demise.

The problem is cleaning up the bodies and putting them into coffins. This creates a lot of unhappy thoughts but I do it to avoid ghosts being spawned.

So what is the most clean way to get rid of children while creating the fewest unhappy thoughts in my dwarves?

Solution 1:

Your elaborate child death trap should work just fine - you can erect a memorial to put a spirit to rest without needing to retrieve the body.

A few caveats:

• Children do actually help out on their own accord, including harvesting crops and storing items.
• As you'd pointed out, being haunted by a child produces unhappy thoughts, however the death of a child will cause this as well. You should be careful with how many children you slaughter as this can spark a tantrum spiral (Dwarfs getting upset causing other dwarfs to get upset, etc.)
• Your bridge plan will work ok (in a sadistic sense), but if you want to make it humane, you can build a bridge on the ground, lift the bridge, corral the kiddies where the bridge goes down, then smash them into oblivion.
• If you want to be as inhumane as possible (Praise Armok), I'd suggest this.