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I was reading this question and it occurred to me that if the Force is indeed passed down through a family, why would Jedi be discouraged to have one?

Were they discouraged from having children in general, even outside of a relationship (brings up an interesting male/female Jedi dynamic)?

How were new Jedi identified? (Ep.1, Qui-gon, "If he had been born in the Republic..." may suggest that all newborns were tested.)

Wouldn't the Jedi want a more reliable source of recruits than merely happenstance identification of Midichlorian concentration, which they'd get through lineage? In fact, couldn't they potentially breed stronger Jedi through pairing?

Machavity
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gregsdennis
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    Hi, welcome to SF&F. You seem to be asking more than one thing here; in fact there are six questions though some of them are related. You should [edit] your question to just focus on one aspect, say why the Jedi discouraged relationships even though the Skywalker lineage showed the potential value of breeding a heritable trait. – DavidW Dec 02 '20 at 04:17
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    Related question. Not a dupe. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/152429/did-yoda-indirectly-tell-luke-skywalker-to-have-children –  Dec 02 '20 at 04:19
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    Yes, I am asking multiple questions, but they're all pretty interrelated. I count 4 (5 if you include the title). – gregsdennis Dec 02 '20 at 04:33
  • Ah. 6. 2 in the last paragraph, I guess. – gregsdennis Dec 02 '20 at 04:57
  • Does this answer your question? Were all Force wielders born from Force-sensitive parents? – fez Dec 02 '20 at 06:27
  • @Fez it adds context, sure, but I don't think it really answers the questions. – gregsdennis Dec 02 '20 at 06:48
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    Just a note on human genetics, the notion of regression toward the mean suggests that you can't necessarily keep breeding to enrich some trait forever. If the offspring of two tall people were even taller, humans would be 10 feet tall by now. It's actually the opposite case, that two very tall people are likely to have a child shorter than them (but perhaps still taller than average), due to the simple fact that most people are shorter than those two people. Two very strong Jedi would actually be more likely to produce a Jedi weaker than both of them, rather than stronger than both. – Nuclear Hoagie Dec 02 '20 at 20:57
  • @gregsdennis: The questions are semi-related, but the answers to some of them are entirely distinct from the answers to others - they're not dependent on one another. As such, some of them should probably be edited out and asked separately. – V2Blast Dec 03 '20 at 00:33
  • @NuclearHoagie While that is true, the intentional removal of people from the gene pool who have a certain trait will reduce the prevalence of that trait over time. For example, if all red headed people decided that they would no longer reproduce you would still get some red headed people being born for a while, but eventually the gene for red-headedness would be effectively removed from the gene pool (no offense meant to red headed people of course, it's just an easy example of an uncommon and easily recognized genetic trait) – Kevin Dec 03 '20 at 16:51
  • @KevinWells If that were always true, congenital diseases that kill before reproductive maturity (e.g. sickle cell anemia) would no longer exist. Individuals with sickle cell disease are indeed removed from the gene pool, yet the disease prevalence is stable because genetic carriers are not detrimentally affected. Even if every single redhead were killed at birth, you would never eliminate the redheaded gene from the gene pool, since non-redheads can carry the gene. – Nuclear Hoagie Dec 03 '20 at 17:15
  • It's not like you need romantic relationships to breed. :-) –  Dec 07 '20 at 20:57
  • @NuclearHoagie The reason that sickle cell anemia was passed on is that it provides some amount of resistance to malaria, so in areas with high malaria prevalence sickle cell is actually beneficial. Additionally people with sickle cell tend to live relatively normal lives with relatively normal life spans, so it is frequently passed on to new generations. Yes it will also be passed on as a recessive gene by carriers, but over time even those will slowly be removed as each time the trait is expressed it is then not passed on. – Kevin Dec 09 '20 at 17:30

2 Answers2

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The point of the Jedi discouraging romantic relationships is because it created an emotional bond making them vulnerable to fear. This point was touched on in season 2 of the Mandalorian,

when Ahsoka Tano says she won't train Grogu because of his own bond with Mando.

Now, what's wrong with fear? The Jedi believed that fear leads to anger and anger to hate and hate to the Dark Side. Something along these lines was said by Yoda in The Phantom Menace, when he refused to train Anakin.

So in conclusion, the Jedi were "afraid" (haha which, according to them, leads to hate so... let that sink in) of Jedi forming attachments, as it typically leads them to the Dark Side, as it did with Vader.

I'm not going to argue the truth of this point of view. I am just stating why the Jedi were against such relationships.

As for the stressing of the Skywalker's strength in the Force. It wasn't necessarily stressed, just told to Luke to let him know of his capability, and that of his father's.

TheHans255
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Firestryke
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    I was thinking of more how it was stressed thematically or narratively. I agree with your sentiments that the Jedi were blindly fearful, though. – gregsdennis Dec 02 '20 at 04:41
  • Recall also, that Palpatine also brings it up to Vader in Ep5, though it can be argued that the Sith would encourage it, being the Jedi's opposition. – gregsdennis Dec 02 '20 at 04:48
  • Similar to one of things you said in your answer: "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..." - a very common quote from US President Franklin Roosevelt. So are we supposed to be afraid of being afraid? But if we're afraid of being afraid, then we have fear, but I thought he said fear was the thing we're supposed to fear. It's self-contradictory. – Panzercrisis Dec 02 '20 at 17:03
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    @Panzercrisis well, he was specifically talking about the Great Depression and the loss of consumer/bank confidence leading to a downward spiral; paraphrased it's 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong, the only source of problems is decreased activity because citizens are too fearful to spend' which is a bit less paradoxical. – Tiercelet Dec 02 '20 at 19:34
  • Nice restatement! Too often that "fear" phrase is used unthinkingly by people looking for a way to be RhEToRicAL. – Lieutenant Zipp Dec 03 '20 at 01:25
  • Makes you want to build your police force entirely of droids or something. – jeffronicus Dec 03 '20 at 16:46
  • @Panzercrisis I've always interpreted that quote as a play on words based on both the similarity and difference between the phrases "to fear" and "to be afraid of". "To fear" something can be "to be wary of" it, or "to desire to avoid" it, not necessarily actually "to be afraid of it". In that interpretation it is not contradictory at all. – CitizenRon Dec 04 '20 at 22:40
  • I know it wasn't meant to be taken completely literally. It still struck me as something that sounds poetic, but wasn't necessarily phrased completely well. Same as when he said that generation had a date with destiny. He seems to be saying that generation is a special case - and he did it in kind of a poetic, inspirationally worded way - but the way he phrased it is still in a way that actually applies to all generations. – Panzercrisis Dec 05 '20 at 19:56
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Jedi are highly capable and very attuned to the Force but that comes at the cost of making them vulnerable to corruption and falling to the dark side. Romantic attachments would increase this risk significantly. Especially for Jedi in training it would be highly dangerous to pursue a passionate relationship.

Note that not all force sensitive become Jedi, and some Jedi retire from the order and stop being Jedi, sometimes exactly because they wanted to pursue a relationship. From this it can be assumed if you stop actively using the force, the risk of you falling to the dark side significantly decrease and so the jedi order does not mind. This means having family lines that are strong in the force probably wasn't that uncommon before the Empire era. You'd just have the occasional family line with a bit more force sensitivity in it.

There probably weren't that many breeding programs for the same reason we don't have that many in reality. It'd be creepy and difficult to organize. And any significant changes in force strength might take a very long time to materialize. Most you would have would probably be two families arranging a marriage between them.

Then with the Empire era I'd assume Palpatine would genocide not just jedi but any force sensitive he could find.

And that's if force sensitivity really is inheritable. It could be more of a fate thing. The skywalker line is fated to be strong in the force. Then it'd be much more random. Even then Palpatine might still have genocided family lines just to be on the safe side.

Also, the jedi order in the era before the Empire was very strict but in some of the Expanded Universe material it's indicated Luke Skywalker's reformed jedi order were less ascetic and allowed for couples (probably would be a good idea to still forbid it for jedi in training).

As a side note, when the only movie that existed was A New Hope there existed a fan theory that Obi-Wan was a clone (because clone wars was a line in the movie), and that his real name was OB-1 (serial number) and that Jedi were originally manufactured clones.

user134764
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