A Normal Affair

[uchidachi]

This was originally going to be a response to socaptivated‘s “A Weasley’s Affair” essay, but, it got so long that I figured it was an essay in its own right. I’m not completely bashing the other essay, but I am analyzing the family from a different, more positive, point of view.
So, here it is, as counterpoint to A Weasley’s Affair:

Comments

[skidmo]

This comment is coming very late, but I just wanted to say, "Hear, hear!" I had previously read the Red-Hen article before reading "A Weasley's Affair," and my one overwhelming thought throughout the article was, "This person must be an only child," a suspicion which was confirmed in another essay. I tend to be a pretty cynical person in general, and I certainly don't think that my upbringing was perfect (far from it actually), but the Weasley's seem to me to be very much like my own family (there were 6 of us kids). A mother of that many children is bound to come off as overbearing; she has no other way to keep track of them all at once. No family is perfect, but beneath the fighting, the nagging and the teasing is the most important characteristic of a good (not just normal) family: love.
Even the twins love Percy, though it may be hard to see. Do you think any of them would have been so upset at his "treachery" if they didn't?
"Any seventh child is probably going to have a more laxed upbringing than her predecessors, and be raised in large part by her siblings."
Yeah, I'd wager a guess that dearladydisdain is not from a large family either. I'm the youngest (of six, not seven, but close enough), and though I was raised a bit by my siblings (or perhaps because of that), I certainly did not have a more lax upbringing. I think it's more likely that when parents have the advantage of seeing their oldest children become adults while their youngest are still in their formative years they figure out everything they don't approve of in the oldest and try to work them out of the youngest. My upbringing was far stricter than that of my brothers (and they agree with me, so it's not just whining from being the youngest). And if there were ever the slightest hint that I was being babied by my parents, my siblings (who did their fair share of raising me) were sure to make up for it by being more strict with me.
So I would have to say that no, the Weasley's aren't perfect, they aren't even normal (being the only wizarding family we've seen of that size), they aren't horrible (or disturbing as the Red-Hen article sees them), they're just BIG! And part of the misunderstanding that readers have in regards to them comes from not realizing that a large family cannot operate under the same system as a small one.