The Missing Babies
Exploring:
- Infant mortality in the wizarding world and why there is so little evidence for it
- How wizarding society functions
- Why having a large family is beneficial
- Why wizards/witches may have a very different attitude to family planning
In previous essays, I have explored how infectious disease can create high death rates in wizarding society. This does not just effect the population structure, it has huge consequences on how society functions and how the wizarding world approaches family planning.
Draco Malfoy is probably not a single child by choice...
Family Planning, Magical Style
We have a subtle indication that infectious diseases like “dragonpox” are a big burden on magical society from the Black Tapestry. The most common death date is 1979, which was at the height of Voldemort’s rise, we are supposed to infer that was the cause of Cygnus and Orion’s death. However look more closely and you will see three somewhat older members of the family died between 1990 and 1992, in quick succession. This looks very suspiciously like an epidemic hitting the family.
There is no indication of the infant mortality rate (the percentage of babies who die before their 1st birthday) in the wizarding world. In pre-industrialised muggle societies it is the youngest members of society that have the highest death rates. However if the death rate is high across several age groups: one would still see a demographic structure resembling the wizarding world/pre-industrial muggle Britain.
On the Black Tapestry, the only child’s death recorded is the original Sirius Black at aged 8, but this does not mean that infant mortality doesn’t exist. In many cultures where infant mortality is high, children are not officially acknowledged until they reach a landmark birthday: usually 1 year. It may be that magical tapestries simply don’t record infants until they reach that landmark birthday or else the tapestry will be littered with deceased infants who are of no use to future generations perusing the tree.
I doubt that Draco Malfoy’s status as an only child is typical of wizarding families. The only other pureblood singleton we have met is Neville and his parents were not in any position to have more children. From the Black Tapestry we see that successive generations of the Blacks have shrunk in size and not expanded as a normal family tree should. It would have been evident to the family that they were dying out.
In the wizarding world, societies functions though a complex network of connections and patronage. For example: Dumbledore is the head of a large network of people who are loyal to him but also receive political protection in return for their service. Most of these members make up the Order of the Phoenix.
Any political minded family, pureblood or otherwise, makes significant gains by having many members who can go out and make important connections within society. These connections and networks can then be shared within the family and used to facilitate the family’s rise in status both politically and financially. Thus for the Black family to actually shrink instead of grow, would have been calamitous in their overall influence on the wizarding world. We know that Sirius’ grandfather had an Order of Merlin awarded by the ministry, which shows in that generation the Blacks still had great influence. However we never hear of any such achievements of status by successive generations and Sirius’ mother appears to have been a hermit for most of her later life. The decline in the size of the family would have had a substantial effect on their decline in status.
Any families who have status or want status potentially benefit from having a large number of children. Perhaps, Molly understands exactly what the Weasleys could gain from having so many children and the large Weasley family is anything but an accident.
Additionally, wizards may have a very different view to modern muggles when it comes to family planning. Remember that small families are a relatively modern phenomenon, caused by muggle development and the advent of birth-control. The wizarding world may look like a developed society but it has developed along a completely different trajectory to its muggle counterpart. Wizards probably had birth-control long before the muggle invented condoms but birth-control is only one element in reducing birth rate; people must also want smaller families.
In our modern muggle world we live in relative safety and comfort, child mortality is at an all-time low. This is not true of the wizarding world. They must factor in high death rates from war and disease into their family planning, just like our pre-industrial ancestors did. There is also no state welfare or anything resembling state social care in old age or illness. Disease don’t just kill, they can often also permanently disable a large proportion of infected people. Children then become the parent’s future insurance policy against such things.
Large families insure against high death rates and infirmity in old age, as well as bring connections/status to families. These are all very compelling reasons for wizards/witches to have large families but this not what we see with the Black family or the Malfoy family, which suggests there is something much more sinister lurking in the background of wizarding society than Dragonpox. It may be that through centuries of inbreeding the purebloods are on the genetic route to extinction (more on this in Genetics and Evolution of Magic).
Draco and by extension Lucius’ disparaging remarks about Arthur’s large family should not be interpreted through a muggle perspective where the poorest in society often have the largest families. Instead, we can see that the guiding force behind this insult is mostly likely jealousy.
Prevention is Better than Cure
A society with high infant mortality does not mean that many people within it cannot live to a ripe old age. In fact the survivors are usually people with good immune systems and thus have a better than average chance of fighting off future infections, making the chances of the living to old age correspondingly greater.
From the evidence that we have: only four people out of the myriad of characters we have met are actually old: Albus Dumbledore, Marchbanks, Tiberius Ogden and Horace Slughorn. Judging by the Black Family tapestry living beyond 100 is a rare occurrence even amongst pureblood wizards.
However wizards/witches must have a better potential of living to a venerable old age compared to their muggle counterparts, if they manage to survive the ravages of plague and war (more on that later). Of the people who do live to a venerable old age: all of them appear to have a good quality of life. Thus the use of magic may not protect wizards from the burden of infectious disease, but provide them instead with protection against age related non-infectious conditions such as cancer.
If you live long enough, you will get cancer. It is likely that magic itself delays, prevents or repairs the genetic mutations humans accumulate throughout their lives and thus prevents the onset of cancer. Apart from cancer, it is also possible that magic may also be protective against degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and osteoarthritis.
Thus healthcare in the wizarding world may be facing a completely different problem to that facing the NHS of muggle Britain. Diseases that burden muggles like cancer, diabetes, dementia etc. are not problems in the wizarding world but a whole host of other infectious diseases are.
However disease may not be the only contributing factor to a high death rate in the wizarding world. In the shadow of plague often lurks another disaster: war.
Continued in Medieval in More Ways than One