why would magic make carrying a girl to term more difficult for an elven mother?

[Sharad9]

In this world, the elven race have access to magic, which is a slow and ritualized process. However, girls are born with more magical capability than boys. As a result, females mages are far more powerful than male mages. four male mages would be equal to one female mage in terms of power. Elfs are biologically similiar to humans, with a few differences. Pregnancy is viewed as more of a long spell, with conception as the begining of the ritual. The sex of the child can be biologically determined by the mother by pouring more of her magic into the growing fetus. As is in most occult theory and magical practice in our world a sacrifice is often needed to create. Birthing a child is no different, the mother must literally sacrifice a part of her power, spirit, and body to create life. Because of the higher magical afinity, carrying a girl to term takes longer takes longer than a boy, a full year as opposed to six months.

I want there to be a downside to this, a small risk for having a girl. What other biological consequences should there be for bringing a girl to term?

Subscriptions (1)

[ngilop]

becuase the baby has absoluely no control, let alone any idea it is doing any magic inside the mothers womb


in this world, a pregnant woman's womb is able to automattically create a short of anti-magic hormone during pregnancy to end any potential 'mishaps' before they start


the issue thought is thus: due to selective breeding to create a female dominated magic ability, the female is now able to create magic that is too powerful for the anti-magic hormones to stop, and sometimes the result is disastrous.

[brian 333]

Demonic influences.

See, it's not that girl babies are more difficult to carry, but that demons seek to possess girls because of their potential.

In most cases the baby 'fights' the possession, and in many cases succeeds, but there are many more failures resulting in miscarriage. Less often, boys with high potential are attacked.

This has lead to rituals and rites to protect expectant mothers and to examine newborns for signs of demonic influences.

So, with all the precautions, why do demons bother? Well, it costs them time, but they have nothing better to do, and even one in a million odds of success will eventually result in success.


As a side issue, a tribe of women with one man can maintain their numbers with a few pregnacies per woman. On the other hand, if women are 20% of the population, each will have to have five live births which reach maturity just to maintain tbeir population. This is why in our world in almost every culture women were protected. It had nothing to do with male dominance,, (in the opinion of those who study such things,) and everything to do with cultural survival.

In a high risk environment, women would have to stay pregnant from fifteen to fifty just to keep up. It's a non-viable model. You are, of course, free to handwave the issue.

But I have options:

1: Only female wizards attract the demons. Women with no magical power do not have daughters with power, though they do perform rituals that they think prevent possession.

2: Women have long life spans compared to men, with a fertile span up to age 70, allowing a birth every four years to produce 12 babies, (2 daughter average,) with determined mothers doubling or tripling this birth rate, generally in their younger years.

3: Multiple births are common. Twins are normal for boys, with triplets not being too uncommon, but most single births are female.

[jqavins]

If gestation is twice as long, it follows that dangerous complications are more common. If they are more likely as the pregnancy progresses, then double the duration would mean well over twice the risk.

[B]ecuase the baby has absoluely no control, let alone any idea it is doing any magic inside the mothers womb, in this world, a pregnant woman's womb is able to automattically create a short of anti-magic hormone during pregnancy to end any potential 'mishaps' before they start.

(Repunctuated)
I like this, and I have a different take on the drawback to it. Imprecision. Like basically all biological processes, this can't be perfectly precise, with the level of the anti-magic hormone perfectly calibrated to both mother and fetus. So, sometimes the fetus's ability is not adequately contained, leading to mishaps. And in other cases there is too much of the hormone, hindering the mother's own magic ability, and making her susceptible to accidents and attacks. Usually the hormone level is OK, like a mild fever helping to fight off an infection, but now and then, like a high fever, the hormone is harmful to the mother.

On the other hand, if women are 20% of the population

Why should women be only 20% of the population?

each will have to have five live births which reach maturity just to maintain tbeir population.

Which is probably not a problem since elves live for hundreds of years.

In a high risk environment

Somewhat higher risk carrying girls than boys doesn't necessarily mean a "high risk" in a more general sense.

women would have to stay pregnant from fifteen to fifty just to keep up.

Unless they are fertile for even half of their several century life span.

[brian 333]

In a scenario in which fewer girls make it to full term, the ratio of boys to girls gets skewed just by that fact alone. Now add in the double gestation time compared to boys and that further skews the odds. Now add in that boys do not have higher rates of miscarriage and yet again the odds skew towards a dominantly male race. I chose 20% out of the blue as a demonstration of the effect, not as an assertion that this would be the only correct answer. Without something taking out the boys, even a small percentage that favors them or inhibits female births will over the long term produce a race dominated by males.

While elves live much longer than humans, typical fantasy has them as a less populous race than humans. This need not be the case, but increasing their fertility rate to keep up with humans while retaining their life span would mean humans were bred out of any environment elves settled back when humans were still cave men. With the potential of a pregnancy every two years over a 400 year fertile span would result in the potential of 200 offspring per mother. Humans, or even orcs, could never keep up

And the high risk environment is simply being alive in a world with orcs.

My post was not intended to be anything but food for thought for the OP, and as such the OP is free to use or ignore any part of it at will.

[Bohandas]

The simple fact of having to the child longer will make the pregnancy more risky in the absence of modern medicine

[Max_Killjoy]

Not sure about how this works with the metaphysics of your setting, but if only females have magic, then maybe the female child is competing with the mother for ambient magic or unconsciously distorting the local magic in a way that's hard on the mother, or something.

[Akisa]

Perhaps there be a possibility that girl being born has XY chromosomes instead of the normal XX chromosomes. This can lead to two possibilities...

Something similar to this village , where outward appearance they look like girls, but when they start hitting puberty they start gaining male genitalia and grow up as men.

Second possibility is that these women are sterile and don't enter puberty like children who are given hormone blockers.