Arthur and Molly Weasly

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 58562

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Debbie" <debmclain at y...> wrote:


> Colleen/"cgbrennan2003" wrote: 
> > Okay, please check my facts and my math, but at the time of CofS, 
> > isn't it established that Hagrid is 63 years old? .... If Mrs. 
> > Weasly was at school before Hagrid, that would put her at least in 
> > her sixties. ....  
> > Ginny is 11 years old in CofS, so Mrs. Weasly would have had to 
> > have her in her fifties ...!  
> > Thoughts?


> 
> Me: Well... if wizards and witches can live up to 150-200 years old, 
> why shouldn't they be able to have children longer? ... Of course, 
> then you wonder why there  aren't more magical children, ....
> 
> -Debbie

bboy_mn:
Colleen, your facts and math are right on the money. If you read my
original post in this thread, and in the old thread I reference, you
will see that I estimated Molly's age in her 80's (70 to +80).

Debbie, made the exact point I was going to make. This also came up in
the discussion before, both in discussing Molly and Arthur, and in
discussing wizard's lifespans. 

Short lesson in biology, what prevents a woman from continuing to have
children is not a lack of available eggs, but a body that has aged to
the point where it is no longer capable of bringing eggs from their
original stored state, to a stage where they have matured to the point
of being able to be fertilized. In a sense, an egg has a lifecycle of
it's own. Starts as a baby egg, of which there are million, and once a
month one of them develops into a mature fertilizable egg. [Admittedly
a very broad and general explanation from a man's limited point of view.]

Wizards and witches maintain their vitality, verility, and overall
'life force' for about twice as long as a muggle does. It seems a
reasonable assumption that the reproductive years are proportional to
a witches longer lifespan.

As to why witches don't have more children, I suspect it IS because
they are able to have children for a longer span of time, so they
aren't racing the biological clock the way most muggle women are. 

In the old thread I reference, I proposed a scenerio in which a witch
has 6 kids in her lifetime but has them 10 years apart. That would
mean that she would never have more than 2 children living at home at
any given time. That would be a large family that gave the impression
of being a small family.

As someone else pointed out, it seems reasonable that witches and
wizards have magical methods of birth control. Methods that are far
more reliable and without the side effects of muggle equivalents. That
would give witches and wizards unprecidented control of family and
life planning. 

Remember, that this is all just speculation. When confronted by
unknown aspects of the wizard world, the best we can do is make
reasonable speculation about what is likely. 'Likely' being the
keyword. There is far more that is within the bounds of possible, than
there is within the bound of likely.

I think if is likely that Molly went to Hogwarts before Hagrid. I
think it is likely that witches have twice the span of fertile years.
I think it is likely that witches and wizard have extremely effective
birth control. As a side note, while far from likely, it is possible
for a woman in her 50's to give birth. I know because our neighbor did it.

But then, that's just one man's opinion.

bboy_mn