I've set the parent skill on for some villagers (some are adept parents in their 20s & 30s) in one of my villages as I've more or less completed everything except the the tablet collectables and still only have 70 villagers. Problem is that none of the villagers are taking advantage of this and I still have to go in and "breed" my villagers.

None? That's very unusual. If you want a population explosion, start a male villager off as a parent. If you're not careful he'll have almost all available females nursing in a few hours, and still only be an adept!

I've set a male to parent, and he reached master ( he became my jack of all trades) but this still didn't result in the expected baby boom, I still had to make him mate. You'd think as it's the nature faction they'd know what to do LOL

Is he over 50? While males over 50 can still produce children (if you initiate the kiss), they will not kiss on their own.

He is now (he's now 77) but when I first set him as a parent he was in his 20s I never breed before they reach 21 as I like to get at least adept on one discipline and trainee on all other disciplines. He became adept parent at 35 so I guessed by then he should be ok to leave, made sure that the parent option was ticked and left him alone to get on with it but still no way would he chase the girls.

Every villager has an innate "personality" that goes beyond their visible likes and dislikes, which can (sometimes significantly) affect a villager's choices. In game development terminology, it's called "emergent behavior" and the results often surprise us, too!

Well I think it must be this whole village as I have now set several of my females as parents (6), some are adept as they've already mated and had babies by my intervention but when they let the baby go they trot off to farming, research or medicine ( all are masters in these fields)

Oh well just have to keep picking the parents myself then.

PS my male parent has now passed over at the 78

Baby Boom! hahahaha hahahaha. I had one of those when some of my villagers where washed away in Tsunami.

OMG Had to post this.. The funniest thing... one of my girl villagers, 25 yrs old a Master Scientist, started frantically running, the comment under her said "embracing".. so I just watched her go, she went to the young adept builder smooched & they were "going inside"... talk about spontaneous! LOL (no baby this time, though)

Lady CFII, are you telling us this game learns on its' own???? One of my little girls suddenly became an apprentice parent! She is 3!!! She has at least 15 years before that comes to fruition.