The use of the word progeny

Question

The word progeny is defined as

A descendant or the descendants of a person, animal, or plant; offspring

by Oxford Dictionary.

My question is that if I can use it instead of "children" to sound formal as in the following contexts.

1. Second hand smoking has pernicious effects on progenies if their parents smoke in the home.

2. Two out of three progenies in Africa are left out of secondary school.

or the word can only suitable for using in a context in which there is reference to the relationship between parents and children.

Answer 1

Progeny is generally used as an uncountable noun.

"My progeny" could refer to 1 child, or to 8 children, 29 grandchildren, and 95 great-grandchildren.

In your two examples, you are trying to use progeny as a countable noun. It's incorrect to do so. "Children" is formal enough to use in your two examples.

Answer 2

As noted in the first answer, progeny is a non-countable noun meaning descendants, so in your example, the plural form progenies is inapt. The Ngram viewer find that the plural is used as a term of art in plant breeding to indicate separate populations of descendants. For example from a USDA Forest Service research note:

The yearly height increment of the wind-pollination progenies was consistently 8 to 12 percent less than that of the cross-pollination progenies....

The progenies here are three groups of trees, each group the descendants of different stands of trees in the Cascades, a mountain range in the western US.