I've wondered about this quite a bit (especially since the house elf rebellion story arc in the MOM RPG, hee).

I suspect that you can indeed purchase a house elf, but most of them are passed from generation to generation as property is passed on as part of the estate. Being that they are living beings, I would presume that they do in fact breed and raise their young, teaching them servitude. In keeping with the comparison that she was drawing to slavery, I'm sure that there exists an entire sub-culture of house elf society, that wizards just don't pay attention to (much as slaves in the Southern US, being normal people who were just opressed, still had culture and community despite being 'owned' by slaves).

I'd like to imagine that there are 'home' lives, elven homes where young are raised away from the view of wizards (can you imagine an infant house elf? The cute of it all!) and taught how to serve their magical 'masters'.

I wonder if they even have culture- much like slaves had their own culture and community with music and dance and art and religion and all of that, I would like to think that the house elves also have such things... in other words, that they're just like anyone else, except that they're being opressed (by cultural conditioning, ignorance, force, or choice, as the case may be).

What do you all think?