I'm seriously tempted to try to revert New Vegas/ttw and Fallout 4 to old-school fallout thinking.
You could kill children back then, but you'd get the child-killer rep. You'd be hated almost everywhere. Your reasons for killing the children were not relevant. Even killing Myron to try to stop the jet trade would could make you become seen as the scum of scum because of his age.

In Fallout 4 and New Vegas, there are plenty of bunkers and such that should almost certainly have children. I think I brought it up before that this would probably change how we viewed certain missions, like House's attack on the Brotherhood. House would be a monster, in old-school fallout, if the Brotherhood wasn't mysteriously sterile.

I'm tempted to bring back the child-killer rep, and put children where they should be for my next games ... and then try to be a good guy, fighting a war. Do I have the guts to do that?
But maybe it would just force me to default to the NCR or something like that. I don't recall them doing anything that would have forced the courier to target children.

It's always interesting how many Bethesda games (and New Vegas) have so few children around, lamplight or whatever being the exception. Morrowind didn't have any children at all. I don't remember about Oblivion.

I have used killable children mods for awhile but not because I actively am trying to kill them every playthrough but for one of two reasons.

1. Any sort of limitation to who you can or can't kill in Fallout frustrates me, if I can't make the choice than we can all just assume that my character will never be that evil despite having a karma that speaks the opposite.

2. Typically when I'm playing a good character who falls to evil, allowing children to be killed or being killed personally by my character is what I usually do as my full fall from good and into evil. It's a difficult decision that I think a person who once had good values and morals would seriously struggle with as he took up the bloodthirsty style of being a raider.

I agree with Tribal Raven on this. I use the Killable Children Mods in my game because I like realism in the game. Kids should not go around unkillable in a harsh wasteland. Like Tribal Raven said it also really irritates me for the game to decide for me who I am not able to kill.
There have been playthroughs where I played a really evil character and kids where not above being targeted when wiping out a family.
Although one thing I disagree on with the Child Killer Perk is how it would mark you as scum to everyone. I think it should be at the very least a faction rep. Like if you killed a Khan kid then the Khans would target you. Or if you killed a kid in secret how the hell would everyone in the world know you where the murderer? Never made sense to me. I use the non punishing Killable Kids version more realistic for me.

Yeah, I agree, it's not necessarily because I am trying to kill kids, only that it irritates me that the limitation is there at all, even if it doesn't come up.
I've heard stories about how hardened convicts in prison will turn on pedophiles. I think it was like that in fallout. It seems that even bad people still stopped short of killing kids, at least in those days, apparently.
The Powder Gangers probably killed every one of the children of Primm, and that might very well have enraged the the Khans, the bad guys of the killable-children days, even though they kidnapped Tandi as a kid. The Khans just seem far, far more civilized as raiders than the nameless mojave raiders of today's fallout,who are almost like sub-human, completely mindless savages, and the fiends, who almost seem to be trying very hard to be as crazy and evil as possible on purpose. The Khans even wear real clothes rather than random bits of metal, leather and human hands.
Many of the diverse people back then were mostly relatively recently from vault 13 or Vault city (even the human bad guys) and so it's conceivable that they might share a common culture,despite some being more good and some being more evil.
If the people of Diamond city are descended from the same vault as the nameless raiders, it's been long, long forgotten. They don't have any ties whatsoever, unlike the Khans, Vipers, Jackals and Shady sands did.

@"Sirdanest" Actually if you nuke the NCR you can find a pair of skeletons that are the size of children

There was a mod called "Children of the Wasteland" that got taken down sometime ago from Nexus.

I think it added a bunch of children to the various population centers of the Mojave. Would have made for a far better playthrough to see so many kids running around

I've recently updated South of The Sea and was doing my usual fixes for VIS-Gifing misc items when I was reminded you have to kill children in it if you go into a certain area.

Spoiler:

That area does cause me issues because of what you have to do.

It would keep the tone that the wasteland is a harsh place, and the misery of the world does not care if you are young or old.

@stoobygacks Classic Fallout really showed this, the Wasteland is not good and your character has to find a place in the world.

For the record, New Vegas Redesigned 3 does an AMAZING job bringing this concept to the Mojave. It's kinda old and Dracomies is going to update it soon but try it out if you haven't. Be warned, it includes some pretty gutwrenching stuff so tread lightly...

@ Sirdanest (Original Post)

If there's one thing that we underestimate about children, is that they can be just as cruel and unforgiving as grown adults, let alone the wasteland itself.

It may be dark to think about, but I think child raiders wouldn't be out of place at all, they would be just as hardened as their fellow adult raiders. There could be child mercenaries, and child slavers too. Because they would learn real frickin quick how the wasteland works, and what they have to do to survive.

I mean, let's face it, there's nothing stopping McCready from blowing your head off the moment you enter the barrier protecting little lamp light. At the same time, there's nothing stopping the player from blowing his head off, breaching the barrier, entering little lamp light, and slaughtering all the children within it. Just to get to the vault containing the GECK. It would also be a slavers paradise, all of those children behind a weak barrier, and the only thing stopping them would be one small child standing guard.

In fact, if we where to bring back killable children, that would add a lot of roleplay options for the player. Fitting right end with solving problems with brute force violence, non-violent actions, or even something in between. Sure the player character could get a nasty reputation, but you have to consider karma, and the alignment of the said children. If your dealing with raider children, wouldn't that be considered an act of good by killing them? If you sold slaves of any kind to child slavers, wouldn't that be considered an act of evil? So you would introduce a lot of factors that would line up with a karmatic and reputation based system.

But alas, Bethesda and Obsidian avoid putting killable children in their games, because of fear of controversy from various groups. Which really baffles me, because you can kill off children in The Sims games like no tomorrow. So what makes Fallout or The Elder Scrolls any different? I mean, there are also tons of movies and books that have violence against children, so why do they get preferential treatment? At the end of the day, video games are works of fiction (and art), and there are people who are sadly too good for it.

Putting in little lamplight and immortal children at the same time was silly.  Do one or the other but not both at the same time, I felt.  I mean, no wonder they can survive as a settlement of just children; they're immortal.  The "essential" flag, i think, should be used very, very sparingly if at all.  New Vegas was pretty good with that but Bethesda games in general use it a little too much.

Fallout is a very, very violent setting, but it avoids most of the controversy that other violent games have, like Grand Theft Auto... pretty sure Bethesda is going out of their way to ensure that remains so, no matter the consequences to the integrity of the game world.  As a business/media/public relations tactic, it's been successful, I guess.  

Fallout 1 and 2 avoided controversy probably simply because the graphics were more primitive back then, in 2d isometric.  (Even though critical hit kills could be comically, awesomely gory -- better than the modern fallout's gore deaths even, but maybe I'm nostalgia-goggles-biased.)  I adored that they were willing to be gory and not censor evil/violent characters... my "bad guy" characters from fallout 1 and 2 did some crazy bad stuff.

New Vegas Redesigned unfortunately used FCO which doesn't work with TTW ... the developers have repeatedly warned against even trying it.

@Sirdanest

New Vegas Redesigned 3 uses the assets of FCO without using the esm or esps. I personally have never had any issues at all with TTW and NV Redesigned 3 being used together.

That is excellent, fantastic news.

@Sirdanest I'm surprised not many people know that. It must have been an issue with FNV Redesigned 2 having conflicts with TTW

Skyrim convinced me that all games should have the option to kill the child NPC's.