DD descendents -Generation Nitpick

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 145720

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "manawydan" <manawydan at n...> wrote:
>
> Catlady wrote:
> > ...
> > (Lily and I were born in 1950-something. My mother was born
> > in 1920-something. Her mother, my grandma, was born in 
> > 1890-something. Her mother, my great-grandmother, died 
> > before I was born, and the pattern suggests she was born
> > in 1860-something. Dumble, being 150 years old in the 1990s,
> > was born in the 1840s and therefore old enough to be a daddy
> >  in the 1860s.)
>
> Ffred:
> 
> Generations in the RW are, as you rightly say, about 30 years.
> But, given the longer wizarding life span ...edited... That 
> would suggest to me that a generation is around 90 years in the
> WW to allow for the longer lifespans obviously, given shorter 
> Muggle lives, a mixed marriage would have children earlier and
> there would be, as in our own world, a spread of parental ages 
> around the average ....
> 
> hwyl
> 
> Ffred

bboyminn:

Nice concept Ffred, but I think there is a flaw in your logic.

I guess it depends on how you define a 'generation'. To some extent it
is the time between when parents have kids and when those kids grow up
enough to have kids of their own. In a sense, it is a theoretical
timespan rather that an actual, and it is generally about 20 years or so.

So regardless of the fact that wizards live longer, the span of each
theoretical generation would be the same; about 20 years. The
differences is that wizards could spawn more than one generation.
Wizards could marry at 20 and have 3 kids in 5 years, and wait for
those kids to grow to be age 20 and have kids of their own. Then the
original wizard parents could take a break of 20 years and still be
young enough to start having kids again, thereby spawing a second new
generation. 

You are right however, in general a muggle woman who married a wizard,
would most likely only be fertile long enough to spawn roughly one new
generation.

I guess I'm just nitpicking at a fine point here, and that point is
based on how a 'generation' is defined. 

Steve/bboyminn