DD descendents -Generation Nitpick

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 145941

> >
> > 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:
> 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. 

zgirnius:
Well, yes, but only if over the past two centuries the pattern has 
been for witches to produce children starting at the age of 20. This 
certainly seems to have been the pattern in the generation of the 
parents of current/recent Hogwarts students. Andromeda and Narcissa 
Black fit this pattern, as does Molly Weasley, and Lily Evans. But 
some of this might have been driven by the First War (as Molly 
suggests). It is certainly possible that if the longer lifespan of 
wizards/witches is correlated with many more childbearing years for 
witches, that many witches under more ordinary circumstances put off 
childbearing until later in their lives, which WOULD produce longer 
generations as Ffred suggests.

Of course, we do not know whether witches experience menopause later 
than Muggle women...