I forgot about their long lifespans!

Dwarven reproduction by Calista on 2015-07-26 16:46:00 UTC Reply

Tolkien dwarves, that is.

So here's what I'm wondering.
There are fewer female dwarves than males.
And of those, only some actually get married and have children.

So to maintain the population of dwarves, does that mean that Tolkien dwarves have huge families as a matter of course--like, twenty siblings, most male? It's like, when a lady dwarf decides to have children, she doesn't go about it halfway.

Or am I missing something here?

Good question! by Huinesoron on 2015-07-26 17:16:00 UTC Reply

Dunno. ^_^

All right, all right, I'll check.

According to Christopher Tolkien, the text that gave rise to Appendix A included a statement that they have few children, so many as four being rare, and that, quoting the Professor:

To these they are devoted, often rather fiercely: that is, they may treat them with apparent harshness... but they defend them with all their power, and resent injuries to them even more than to themselves.

The picture we're given is of a people wherein roughly two-thirds are able to reproduce (ie, 1/3 drop out due to being unattached males - the unmarried women I'm neglecting for mathematical simplicity). If they average three children, then you're still getting 1 child back for each member of their parents' generation. That produces a fairly static population count.

It's actually quite likely that the number of children is heavily ritualised. They certainly have rituals regarding when to have them: virtually every firstborn we have record of is 100 years younger than his father, and every second born is 110 years after his father. (Thorin is actually an exception to this; his younger brother was born only five years after him.) Tolkien even states this explicitly, stating: [Women] are seldom seen in genealogies. They join their husbands' families. But if a son is seen to be 110 or so years younger than his father, this usually indicates an elder daughter.

The more I read about them, the more I realise that dwarves were deeply into (non-religious) ritual. They all marry at the same age, have their children at the same age. They'll follow their kings into virtually anything. Their women stay at home, quite possibly voluntarily. They speak a language which hasn't changed since their species was created. They carry racial grudges as deep as chasms.

All of which says that the ones who buck the trend - Gimli Elf-friend, those women who don't marry - must be very strong personalities indeed.

hS

I forgot about their long lifespans! by Calista on 2015-07-26 17:35:00 UTC Reply

So of course they wouldn't have a swarm of little dwarves running around; they'd have children at regular intervals for a relatively long time. That makes more sense to me.

An average of three children per family would still be a bit low because of the unmarried females, of which there are enough for it to be remarked on. So, maybe four or five per family, one every ten years for fifty years...

That dwarven females usually stay at home doesn't necessarily mean they don't have exciting lives, though. Not when your home is the entire inside of a mountain. For a dwarf, staying at home is probably the equivalent of our "never going to a foreign country". I wonder how much of that famous dwarven craftsmanship comes from the women.

*Paging hS* Apropos of nothing... by Scapegrace's Magical Internet Oblong on 2015-07-27 21:10:00 UTC Reply

What were traditionally female dwarven occupations? It was my belief that they did more refining work &c, but that might be me making shit up. =]

Absolutely no idea. by Huinesoron on 2015-07-30 21:13:00 UTC Reply

Food production? Furniture-making? Weaving? Sewage collection? There's a lot of stuff that ain't smithing that goes into running a civilisation.

hS

The reason I'm thinking about this... by Calista on 2015-07-26 17:44:00 UTC Reply

Is a totally unrelated story, except that they both have in common the issue of population. The Giver quartet is finally finished, with the last book, "Son", recently out and giving us an interesting look into the life of a Birthmother.

It's with the population numbers that I've been intrigued, since there seems to be a stable canonical plot hole there:

--Each year, fifty children are born from birthmothers. These are usually single pregnancies, and twins are unusual enough to be remarked on.
--Each family is assigned two children, never three.
--Not everyone is assigned a spouse, and only couples can raise children.
--Each birthmother has only three pregnancies, after which she goes into a manual labor job.

It's never directly stated, but this does imply that two-thirds of females become birthmothers. The bigger plot hole is this: Not everyone is assigned a spouse, and families are allowed only two children each. That means that for each generation there are fewer places for children. And yet the population stays constant.

The author has admitted that she knows about the problem, but had gotten the book published before she realized it. So the plot hole had to stay, and be author-acknowledged too. Now I'm just curious what happens when a plot hole is canon.