[BEAR.]

Originally Posted by Socks

Another thing, I thought the rule was a medicine cat can't take on a mate and have kits, but that doesn't prevent them from falling in love, right?
Like, if a medicine fell in love with a cat who couldn't have kits, or they just didn't have kits together, it'd be totally fine, right?
If it's about devoting time to the clan and treating all the clan as if they were your kits then why are clan leaders allowed to have kits?

There's a bit of a difference between being a leader and a medicine cat. The duties of a leader aren't as demanding as that of a medicine cat; they do ceremonies, make announcements, and occasionally decide whether or not they need to steal prey or attack another faction. If a leader needed to step back to have / raise their kits, it's pretty easy for the deputy to fill in.

With medicine cats, it's not that simple. They are the sole source of healing in the Clan, and training their apprentices usually takes twice as long as training a warrior. Distracting themselves with coveted things - love and kits, would impede their ability to efficiently train their next apprentice. In addition, if they were to pursue a relationship and have offspring, they would be leaving an inexperienced cat in charge of all the Clan's ailments until they were able to resume their duties (even a fully trained apprentice is still inexperienced; it doesn't matter if they get their full name or not.) It's also possible they could be biased towards who they heal-- for example, if a battle were to take place and their mate was injured, they may be more inclined to tend to their mate before the rest of their Clan-mates. Restricting them from romantic relationships helps to ensure medicine cats put everyone else first before themselves.

I personally believe the sin related to the rule is that the Erins hammered this rule in at the very beginning of the series only to go "oh well" when it came to Leafpool running off with Crowfeather and having kits. They made a half-hearted attempt to "punish" her only to let her play medicine cat again in the next arc. It's ridiculous, especially when paired with what they've done to previous medicine cats who broke the medicine cat code (e.g. Yellowfang.)