#the gluttony period is why gilora and ulani don't like cardassian cuisine anymore

[comic-sans-chan]

Big part of why Cardassians became colonizers and spread out to so many different planets (besides the fact that they suck) is because they have an overpopulation issue. They fuck and they fuck often and have kids often and throw them away like they're nothing. Orphans are very common and it's taboo but it's inevitable. Yes, family is everything, and that's why when you have a kid with someone you don't intend to permanently settle down with, that kid gets discarded. Kids outside of family units don't count as citizens. There are no single parent households without that single parent being a widow/widower. Proud legacy or bust.

Pregnancy and birth are not the long and painful processes that they are for humans and are in fact highly eroticized. Cardassians experience a burst of gluttony and lay eggs shortly after sex without any medical assistance. Those eggs get stuck in an incubator for months. Oftentimes that incubator is in an orphanage, so orphans never so much as lay eyes on their parents and familial bonds only start in earnest after hatching, so it's no skin off the parents' backs. 

This makes them sound like cold heartless assholes, because they are, but it should be noted that it is considered the morally correct and kind thing to destroy eggs after laying them and most parents can't make themselves do that. So, if an orphan egg is left to hatch, that is in itself an act of some complicated love. Except that the kids are then doomed to be chimney sweeps or gardeners or tailors or Obsidian Order agents banned from familial attachments or w/e. It is taboo to not destroy eggs, but it is common.