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NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Considering how poor the Weasleys are, most wizards might well use birth control and abortion. Both seem like they should be magically feasible, and wizards might actually know whether fetuses are conscious.
The Weasleys do seem to be more cosmetically poor than anything else. I mean, we're told they're poor, and that they wear shabby clothing and have hand-me-down wands, but they own a big house and land and broomsticks and a car(!) and everyone of age in the family is gainfully employed, often in reasonably respectable and lucrative jobs. Makes you wonder where the money's going.
I'm not sure, but it could be that while they're hardly desperate, they can't quite run with people who are upper middle class or better. They're getting by, but they don't have much to spare.
Speaking as the middle of 5 kids - having a bunch of kids close to the same age like that can get expensive, and Molly didn't work.
For most of the series, they have several school-age children, and many of the employed ones are at least somewhat estranged from the parents. It's not hard to believe that they could be fairly shabby.
Beyond what has already been said by other posters, they take vacations all the time. I get that it was probably a narrative technique, to get them out of the way and either keep Ron around or move him away, but it was unbelievably frustrating that they would choose to all go out and have fun before getting Ron a wand that was actually attuned to him, considering how central to their lives wands are.
I'm probably biased both in my love of (the idea of) magic and in my enjoyment in being a homebody, though I'm not sure what that might be called at the moment.
(nods) And the Fetusmouths were driven into isolated seclusion in the early 1200s due to ethical concerns, and also they were really annoying at baby showers.
And thus did the nine Ancient and Most Noble Houses of Britain become eight.
Fetusmouth sounds to me remarkably like a synonym for "babyeater".
I think I’ve actually seen something on the lines of “interesting potions for girls if you know what I mean”—but though I don’t remember if in canon or MoR.
Yeah, but even with birth control our families are bigger than that. Perhaps it's just Voldemortality?
Well, the Weasleys have a somewhat larger family, despite participating in the war, and they’re somewhat low-status among the magic users. It might be a semi-unconscious cultural thing. Most Slytherins concentrate on building status, or on grooming a heir worthy of it if they have status (and have little love to split), the Ravenclaws are busy reading books, Griffindors are busy heroing like Dumbledore, and Hufflepufs have to pick up all the slack.
But yeah, war is probably the main reason, the older parts of family trees have more branches. (Well, out-of-universe it’s probably just how writing works: you initially concentrate on a few characters, and they have to be diverse so you make them from different backgrounds and families, so you have mostly only-children, but later you need to build up the relationships so you get more complex family trees in the past.)
Kids really aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things, as long as you don't spoil them too badly. If my great-grandparents could afford to raise a family of 13 during the Depression, then I think any random wizard could afford to have more than a couple.