Craft 2, child dropdown, database
If I understand correctly, you want to create a &lt;select&gt; element with options from fields you already setup in the CMS. In that case you can use something like this to get the data for the field:

&lt;label for="yourField"&gt;Your Field&lt;/label&gt;
&lt;select id="yourField" name="yourFieldHandle"&gt;

  {% set dropdownField = craft.fields.getFieldbyHandle('yourFieldHandle') %}
  {% for option in dropdownField.settings.options %}
    &lt;option value="{{ option.value }}"&gt;{{ option.label }}&lt;/option&gt;
  {% endfor %}

&lt;/select&gt;


…replacing yourFieldHandle with the handle of your field, e.g.: children.