The Aging of Elves

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

What a parenting sentence that is! Fifty years. What an incentive to family planning. No wonder elves had so few children.

Laws & Customs among the Eldar (HoMe 10):

For at the end of the third year mortal children began to outstrip the Elves, hastening on to full stature while the Elves lingered in the first spring of childhood. Children of Men might reach their full height while Eldar of the same age were still in body like to mortals of no more than seven years. Not until the fiftieth year did the Eldar attain the stature & shape in which their lives would afterwards endure, & for some a hundred years would pass before they were ful grown.

The Eldar wedded for the most part in their youth & soon after their fiftieth year.

It seems that Elves wedded as soon as they reached adulthood, had children of their own soon after, & then got on with more interesting things . Tolkien at first applied the same condition to Numenorean children, due to their longer life, as to Elves - this extension of 'childhhood' - but later changed his mind.