Why is Draco an only child?

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 127138


Emma said:
> Nice summary.  OTOH, this means that the system set up to encourage 
> single births (of boys).  This is not good for a social system.  You 
> need a spare in case something happens to the heir.  And you need at 
> least some people produing girls or all your little boys  wind up 
> with no one to marry.
> 
> Emma

Most feudal systems have encouraged single births - and the WW is very
middle-age-ish in its social configuration. And I agree that it's not a good
social system (more because of the drive towards inbreeding than anything
else), very few social systems are used because they're good - when you
get right down to it, our own modern world has a extremelly bad social
system for those living in the best conditions.

However, I do disagree with your stated reasons. Producing "spares" in
case something happens to the heir in a system where bones can be
regrown overnight, falls from several stories high are of no moment and
even the smallest child is protected from almost everything the natural 
world can throw at them (sure, Harry was protected from the AK because
of the Love Shiled, but I assume it was regular magic that protected him
from the house). No, the bad thing about having a single child is that there
is no generation substitution - put mathematically, the growth rate is
negative: fewer people in each subsequent generation. And that is obviously
a bad thing.

On the subject of the system encouraging male births, too, I feel that there
is not enough cannon to make a reasonable deduction. There has not been,
to date, that I remember, a clear case of female discrimination (unless you
count the CoMC class that Ms. Grubby-Plank gave on unicorns, and that was
female positive discrimination). In sports, the teams seem to be unbiasedly
mixed (except for Slytherin, and it has been pointed out that in their case
they're only aiming for physical supremacy to play foul anyway). Indeed, we
don't know what the inheritance rules are, but I'd be surprised if there where
clauses against women inheriting. The WW depends heavily on magic, and
from Hermione's example, it is obvious that women are not at a disadvantage
as oposed to the usual "I can bash you with a sword you couldn't even lift so
that makes me the one making the rules around here" kind of justification that
placed women in thrall of men for most of our history.

However, once again going historical, it has been a regular fact that female
children would be married off with a big dowry while the eldest male would
inherit the title, and WW could be following the rules. It is just that I haven't
really seen that reflected in the books - although I'm willing to listen to cannon
either way.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf, manually editing the length of his lines so that they won't be too long
for yahoo groups - even though he is using the on-line text box