no whims for child sims?

In my game, the adult sims have whims as usual, but the child sims don't? They will occasionally get a wish to sleep/eat/bathe if their needs get low enough, but other than that there are never any wants. This is not unique to one save file, and doesn't appear to be related to any of my mods (I removed the whole folder to test, same issue). The "show wants and fears" option in settings is of course checked. Anyone have any idea what's going on???