Elven children

[twinkle]

hi all....
since i am also a newbie to this site i'm not particularly sure wether this subject goes here or is even a subject per se....
this just interests me and i was wondering if some of you could fill me in.....
i only read the hobbit and lotr and just listening to deeper discussions(when they occur)in chat, more and more questions pop into my head......one of them is this:
elven children....seeing as though elves are immortal, how is the timeline for their physical maturity......are elven "toddlers" ever mentioned in any of tolkiens books?
would really like to know how they run through the stages from infancy to adulthood.....
who rears the children? would their childhoods and their care have been similar to our middle ages? male children fostered and such?
maybe not a "deep" discussion, but i hope a worthwhile one?

[Raefindel]

I have not read the Silmarilian either so maybe I'm not all that qualified to answer your question, but hey, I got here first! Ha ha ha. The Elves,with few exceptions, by the time of Lotr books, don't have children because they are the elder race and leaving Middle Earth. In the earlier ages, they did have children and rear them much as we do.

[Raefindel]

Oh, and Welcome to the Barrow-Downs, Twinkle. Named after your favorite star? Enjoy your time here. Everyone is very friendly.

[Orald]

IIRC Elves mature around the age of 50, and do not age much after that. Although some, like Cirdan, who are very old, and remained in ME so long, start to weary of the world and age, growing a beard and such.

[Kuruharan]

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk



Nice sig Durelen.

You wouldn't happen to remember where it says 50 years would you? I thought that it was about 50 years but I could not remember where I saw it.

[Orald]

I don't have any of my books with me right now to say for sure, but I would have to say Quendi and Eldar. I will check on it for you though.

[Nufaciel]

Hi! I'm a newbie to this site, but I do have the answer to where you can find the info you're looking for. It's in Morgoth's Ring, starting on page 209.

[firncristwen]

Aww! I keep picturing little Legolas and Haldir :-)

[Birdland]

I wonder how baby elves would act? Would they drool and need their elven nappies changed? Would they go through the Terrible Twos? (or Twenties?)

Or maybe they come straight out of the womb all wise and other-worldly, like that kid in "Dune" did.

Hard to image what a baby elf would be like, but I bet they're a handful. Otherwise, why would you live for 6000 years, and only have one or two kids?

[Raefindel]

LOL! smilies/smile.gif I'll bet they WERE a handful! I can imagine Elladan and Elrohir coming home with their little bows in hand... "YOU tell him", "NO, YOU tell him" "Tell me what?" Father Elrond says. "Elrohir shot down another eagle!" "Well YOU told me to!!" smilies/biggrin.gif

[twinkle]

Originally posted by Raefindel:
<STRONG>Oh, and Welcome to the Barrow-Downs, Twinkle. Named after your favorite star? Enjoy your time here. Everyone is very friendly.</STRONG>

thank you raefindel for your welcome and your response...
not named after my favorite star i'm afraid, yet after the everpresent twinkle in my eye....i have a mischievous streak a mile long smilies/wink.gif

it sounds to me after the posts i have read so far that there is not much written on the subject of my original message....
at least i know now that physical maturity comes around 50 yrs of age, but i also wonder if elven children were otherworldly from birth as birdland does.....
alas i will have to cling to my imagination a bit further....but that is also a nice place to be.....

-twinkle

[Kuruharan]

Durelen, and Nufaciel
Thank you, I knew it was around somewhere. smilies/smile.gif

it sounds to me after the posts i have read so far that there is not much written on the subject of my original message....

After a while it gets to be like second nature. smilies/wink.gif

[Gayahithwen]

Elven children.. yeah, the thought is now in my mind.. arrrrggghhh.. but just one idea:
Galadriel had four brothers.. and if I'm not toally wrong, there are more bigsized families.. so it can't be that bad.. maybe they are just trying not to be part of the population growth to much? Family planning?

Besides, can you imagine a pregnant elf? I know, the idea is frustration once it gets into your mind, but think about it...

[Raefindel]

Elves lived such long lives, Well They are immortal, that if they had children throughout their "childbearing years" like we do they would likely have scores of children and the world would be dominated by Elves.

[Gayahithwen]

I just think I came up with the final solution why elves doesn't have that many children.. Since elves doesn't sleep, they can't have beds, can they?? So it would only be on somehow rare occasions there was a possibility for them to.. well, you know.. ^_^ if you don't sleep, just wander around in the woods, looking at beautiful things, then I don't think it would be so many times alone with the one you love, will they??

Oh, now I'm just becoming silly because I'm suffering from a big lack of sleep, so please don't care about me.. if it wasn't for the fact that I had allready written so much I would just delete this, but now I am tired anyway.. Please don't kill me if you don't like my idea.. ^_^

[Aralaithiel]

Thanks for that image of Elladan & Elrohir, Raefindel! I can just picture the look on Elrond's face!! LOL! smilies/biggrin.gif
Oh, and what's wrong with being dominated by Elves?!?!?! smilies/biggrin.gif smilies/tongue.gif I am the High Queen of the Eldar, you know!!

[Raefindel]

Can't really take the credit, Birdland inspired me! smilies/smile.gif

[Amanaduial the archer]

Bringing up this topic again rather than make a new one (ah, see my halo shine...) although it would probably fit better in Novices and Newcomers...

Just wanting to clarify a few things for the purposes of an RPG character:

When you say elves 'mature' at 50 years, would you mean in the same way that humans mature at about 18 years old (in theory)? Would this be when they were fully grown, or would it before then? If so, at what sort of pace would childhood go - would it just be like a human childhood but slowed down to less than half the speed?

Any answers would be most helpful...

[Estelyn Telcontar]

davem just recently quoted the relevant answer to this question on The Aging of Elves (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=1406), post #10. Hope that helps!

[VanimaEdhel]

Elves lived such long lives, Well They are immortal, that if they had children throughout their "childbearing years" like we do they would likely have scores of children and the world would be dominated by Elves.

That is a curious question - obviously by the Third Age, the Elves began to leave off having children, but you would have thought that, even given that Elves only had a few children each, it would have gotten more crowded than it did. The average Elf seemed to have two or three children. Since most parents did not die, that leaves the children and the adults. After just a few generations - even giving, say, a few hundred years of a gap between birth and eventual procreation of the children themselves - it starts to get a bit crowded.

[Formendacil]

That is a curious question - obviously by the Third Age, the Elves began to leave off having children, but you would have thought that, even given that Elves only had a few children each, it would have gotten more crowded than it did. The average Elf seemed to have two or three children. Since most parents did not die, that leaves the children and the adults. After just a few generations - even giving, say, a few hundred years of a gap between birth and eventual procreation of the children themselves - it starts to get a bit crowded.

Who knows what it was like in Valinor or Eressea (but they had plenty of room there, I wager), but in Middle-earth there was no net growth, I think, only net loss.

The number of Elves being born was probably only slightly ahead of or equal to the number of Elves dying. After all, the Elves of Lindon and Rivendell kept getting embroiled in the Angmar/Arnor wars- even the Lorien folk joined in a couple times. The Elves of Lorien and Mirkwood, especially the Mirkwood ones, were constantly quarrelling with Dul Guldor. Lothlorien was severely endangered at the time of the Balrog's awakening, and the time of the Dwarves fleeing from Moria.

That's just deaths. On top of that one has to remember the steady, constant trickle of Elves to the West.

I have no idea what the situation was like there, but in Middle-earth it was not one of an Elvish population boom.

[narfforc]

Elured and Elurin are called the young sons of Dior. Elurin means, In Remembrance of Elu (Thingol). Dior leaves Lanthir Lamath for Menegroth with his family, upon hearing of the death of Thingol. I do not know the time difference between these two events, but if Diors younger son is named in remembrance of King Thingol, then he must have been very young indeed. I also think that when the servents of Celegorm left the sons to starve in the forest, these children are incabable of looking after themselves, an older elven prince would have felt at home in any wood/forest