[HPforGrownups] Why are *all* Muggles so tolerant of their wizard children?

[shane dunphy]

No: HPFGUIDX 47317

Chris wrote:
>Islam and Christianity both have very strong prohibitions against >magic 
>and I suspect that many parents would be reluctant to allow >their children 
>to go off into a really dangerous (inc. voldemort) >world which they know 
>nothing about and would be mostly helpless >against if their child decided 
>to turn their foes or other siblings >into frogs and then could not undo 
>the spell. I've noticed some really >scary stories (not HP) based round 
>that very possibility.

I reckon that many parents from the MW would have huge Dursleyesque issues 
about their children getting involved in magic or witchcraft.  I also 
imagine that many children would have preconceptions about witches and 
wizards as being evil, gleaned largely from fairy-tales and movies.  
Psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim and Carl Jung have commented on the 
importance of these archetypes to the development of our psyches (learning 
about the realities of good and evil in the world; accepting that happiness 
in life is often accompanied by suffering; that trials, no matter how 
difficult and painful, can be overcome when approached with strength and 
moral truth).  Before either parents or children could be expected to get 
involved in this new and, to the uninitiated, frightening world, there would 
surely have to be some level of introduction and re-education.  Does 
Hogwarts run some type of class for families who are just getting used to 
the reality of a wizarding world?  Is there an orientation class for 
muggle-borns?  There *must* be something, although we haven't yet 
encountered it.

Of course, it's interesting to note that some of the fears these muggle 
parents will have are genuine.  What is LV but our worst nightmare of what 
an evil sorcerer is like?  The concept of a hidden society, with rival 
factions at war with one another and a world-wide cover up going on would 
scare the living daylights out of anyone. If you really think about it, 
there are aspects of the WW that bear the worst aspects of what magic can 
produce (AK, the no longer human LV, the Dementors and indeed the deeply 
inhuman treatment of magical prisoners in Azkaban), combined with the worst 
aspects of our own world (poverty, prejudice, bureaucracy, political 
dishonesty).  You've got to admit, you'd think long and hard before sending 
your child into such a world.

Shane.

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