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Mongol campaigns are actually a good example of what I am talking about. Of course they don't fight with their mum on their back but I would assume you are aware of baggage trains and such. Not every person that is attached to an army is present on the battlefield, even European armies often brought their families or other followers with them. A mongol army was a tribe on the move, the family went with the army taking their goats and everything else they had and then setting up their Ger at the end of the days march and letting their horses and such graze. Which was part of the reason Mongol armies actually were strategically slower that many other armies, but once they were near the enemy the actual fighting components of the army would break of and do the actual fighting.
> Also let me remind you steppe people served as mercenaries in all the wars of the people living just over their borderlands (Chinese, Iranians, Byzantines, HRE just for a couple of examples) since the age of Scythians. These were organized units of soldiers, and not a tribe of civilians fighting out of necessity.
Well mercenary units are different and may not always follow the same pattern. Although their were nomadic groups that did bring their entire families along with them to serve other nations.