Children, childbirth, child care, and more

Children

Children were, essentially, the primary reason to marry.

Among the nobility, children would perpetuate the family name and increase the family's holdings through advancement in service to their liege lords and through advantageous marriages.

Some of these unions were planned while the bride- and groom-to-be were still in the cradle.

A Question of Affection

Few aspects of life in the Middle Ages can be more difficult to determine than the nature and depth of the emotional attachments made among family members.

It is perhaps natural for us to assume that in a society that placed a high value on its younger members, most parents loved their children.

Biology alone would suggest a bond between a child and the mother who nursed him.

Infanticide was rampant. Anyone capable of extinguishing the life of a helpless newborn was incapable of feeling or expressing love for an infant.

In a society where so much value was placed on children, and so much hope was invested in a couple's ability to produce children, in most families, children were warmly and happily welcomed into the medieval world.

Childbirth

Because the foremost reason for marriage at any level of medieval society was to produce children, the birth of a baby was usually a cause for joy. Yet there was also an element of anxiety.

While the childbirth mortality rate is probably not as high as folklore would have it, there was still a possibility of complications, including birth defects or a breech birth, as well as the death of mother or child or both.

And even under the best of circumstances, there was no effective anesthetic to eradicate the pain.

The lying-in room was almost exclusively the province of women; a male physician would only be called in when surgery was necessary.

Under ordinary circumstances, the mother--be she peasant, town-dweller, or noblewoman--would be attended by midwives.

A midwife would usually have more than a decade of experience, and she would be accompanied by assistants whom she was training.

In addition, female relatives and friends of the mother would frequently be present in the birthing room, offering support and good will, while the father was left outside with little more to do but pray for a safe delivery.

The presence of so many bodies could raise the temperature of a room already made warm by the presence of a fire, which was used to heat water for bathing both mother and child.

In the homes of the nobility, gentry, and wealthy townspeople, the birthing room would usually be freshly-swept and provided with clean rushes; the best coverlets were put on the bed and the place was turned out for display.

Sources indicate that some mothers may have given birth in a sitting or squatting position.

To ease the pain and to hasten the process of childbirth, the midwife might rub the mother's belly with ointment.

Birth was usually expected within 20 contractions; if it took longer, everyone in the household might try to help it along by opening cupboards and drawers, unlocking chests, untying knots, or even shooting an arrow into the air.

All of these acts were symbolic of opening the womb.

The delivery

If all went well, the midwife would tie off and cut the umbilical cord and help the baby take its first breath, clearing its mouth and throat of any mucus.

She would then bathe the child in warm water or, in more affluent homes, in milk or wine; she might also use salt, olive oil, or rose petals.

It was not uncommon to rub honey on the palate to give the baby an appetite.

Mortality

The Initial months of life for medieval children were tough and only around fifty percent of children would survive during the first year due to a high child mortality rate.

Swaddling

The infant would then be swaddled snugly in linen strips so that his limbs might grow straight and strong, and laid in a cradle in a dark corner, where his eyes would be protected from bright light.

Baptism

It would soon be time for the next phase in his very young life: Baptism. A child was usually baptized on the day he was born.

The primary purpose of baptism was to wash away original sin and drive all evil from the newborn child.

So important was this sacrament to the Catholic Church that the usual opposition to women performing sacerdotal duties was overcome for fear an infant might die unbaptized.

Midwives were authorized to perform the rite if the child was unlikely to survive and there was no man nearby to do it.

If the mother died in childbirth, the midwife was supposed to cut her open and extract the baby so that she could baptize it

Baptism had another significance: it welcomed a new Christian soul into the community. The rite conferred a name on the infant that would identify him throughout his life, however short it might be.

Godparents

The official ceremony in the church would establish lifelong ties to his godparents, who were not supposed to be related to their godchild through any blood or marriage link.

Thus, from the very beginning of his life, the medieval child had a relationship to the community beyond that defined by kinship.

The role of godparents was mainly spiritual: they were to teach their godchild his prayers and instruct him in faith and morals. The relationship was considered as close as a blood link, and marriage to one's godchild was prohibited.

Because godparents were expected to bestow gifts on their godchild, there was some temptation to designate many godparents, so the number had been limited by the Church to three: a godmother and two godfathers for a son; a godfather and two godmothers for a daughter.

Generally, at least one of the godparents would be of a higher social status than the parent.

The mother

The mother would stay at home, not only to recuperate, but because the Church generally followed the Jewish custom of keeping women from holy places for several weeks after giving birth. The father would assemble the godparents, and together with the midwife they would all bring the child to the church. This procession would frequently include friends and relatives, and could be quite festive.

Life for the Infant

Folklore has it that the medieval child spent his first year or so wrapped in swaddling, stuck in a cradle, and virtually ignored.

This raises the question of how thick-skinned the average medieval parent had to be in order to disregard the persistent cries of hungry, wet and lonely babies. The reality of medieval infant care is a trifle more complex.

Swaddling

In cultures such as England in the High Middle Ages, babies were often swaddled, theoretically to help their arms and legs grow straight. Swaddling involved wrapping the infant in linen strips with his legs together and his arms close to his body.

This of course immobilized him and made him much easier to keep out of trouble.

But infants were not swaddled continuously.

They were changed regularly and released from their bonds to crawl around. The swaddling might come off altogether when the child was old enough to sit up on his own. Furthermore, swaddling was not necessarily the norm in all medieval cultures. Gerald of Wales remarked that Irish children were never swaddled, and seemed to grow strong and handsome just the same.1

Whether swaddled or not, the infant probably spent much of its time in the cradle when it was home.

Busy peasant mothers might tie unswaddled babies into the cradle, allowing them to move within it but keeping them from crawling into trouble. But mothers often carried their babies about in their arms on their errands outside the home. Infants were even to be found near their parents as they labored in the fields at the busiest harvest times, on the ground or secured in a tree.

Babies who were not swaddled were very often simply naked, or wrapped in blankets against the cold. They may have been clad in simple gowns. There is little evidence for any other clothing, and since the child would quickly outgrow anything sewn especially for it, a variety of baby clothing was not an economic feasibility in poorer homes.

Feeding

An infant's mother was ordinarily its primary caregiver, particularly in poorer families. Other family members might assist, but the mother usually fed the child since she was physically equipped for it. Peasants didn't often have the luxury of hiring a full-time nurse, although if the mother died or was too ill to nurse the baby herself, a wet nurse could often be found. Even in households that could afford to hire a wet nurse, it was not unknown for mothers to nurse their children themselves, which was a practice encouraged by the Church.

Medieval parents sometimes found alternatives to breast feeding their children, but there is no evidence that this was a common occurrence. Rather, families resorted to such ingenuity when the mother was dead or too ill to breast feed, and when no wet nurse could be found. Alternate methods of feeding the child included soaking bread in milk for the child to ingest, soaking a rag in milk for the child to suckle, or pouring milk into his mouth from a horn. All were more difficult for a mother than simply putting a child to her breast, and it would appear that -- in less affluent homes -- if a mother could nurse her child, she did.

Wet nurses

However, among the nobility and wealthier town folk, wet nurses were quite common, and frequently stayed on once the infant was weaned to care for him through his early childhood years.

Parents could and did take an active interest in the welfare and daily activities of their children. They were also known to take great care in choosing the nurse, and treated her well for the ultimate benefit of the child.

Tenderness

Whether a child received its food and care from its own mother or a nurse, it is difficult to make a case for a lack of tenderness between the two. Today, mothers report that nursing their children is a highly satisfying emotional experience. It seems unreasonable to assume that only modern mothers feel a biological bond that in more likelihood has occurred for thousands of years.

It was observed that a nurse took the place of the mother in many respects, and this included providing affection to the babe in her charge. Bartholomaeus Anglicus described the activities nurses commonly performed: consoling children when they fell or were sick, bathing and anointing them, singing them to sleep, even chewing meat for them.

Evidently, there is no reason to assume the average medieval child suffered for lack of affection, even if there was reason to believe his fragile life would not last a year.

Death came in many guises for the littlest members of medieval society. With the invention of the microscope centuries in the future, there was no understanding of germs as the cause of disease. There were also no antibiotics or vaccines. Diseases that a shot or a tablet can eradicate today claimed all too many young lives in the Middle Ages. If for whatever reason a babe could not be nursed, his chances of contracting illness increased; this was due to the unsanitary methods devised for getting food into him and the lack of beneficial breast milk to help him fight disease.

Childhood Development

Once a child attained mobility, danger from accidents increased. Adventurous toddlers fell down wells and into ponds and streams, tumbled down stairs or into fires, and even crawled out into the street to be crushed by a passing cart.

Unexpected accidents could befall even the most carefully-watched toddler if the mother or nurse was distracted for only a few minutes; it was impossible, after all, to baby-proof the medieval household.

Peasant mothers who had their hands full with myriad daily chores were sometimes unable to keep a constant watch on their offspring, and it was not unknown for them to leave their infants or toddlers unattended.

Court records illustrate that this practice was not very common and met with disapproval in the community at large,1 but negligence was not a crime with which distraught parents were charged when they had lost a child.

It has been proposed that in a society with a high child mortality rate, parents made no emotional investment in their children. This assumption is belied by the accounts of devastated mothers being counseled by priests to have courage and faith upon losing a child. One mother is said to have gone insane when her child died.

Affection and attachment were obviously present, at least among some members of medieval society.

Medieval society on the whole regarded infanticide as a horrible act. The killing of unwanted infants was therefore the exception, not the rule, and cannot be regarded as evidence of widespread indifference towards children from their parents.

Play

A common misconception about medieval children is that they were treated like adults and expected to behave like adults as soon as they could walk and talk.

Biologically, this is a somewhat ludicrous expectation. Communication skills, motor control and physical strength all take some time to develop in a child, and it is unreasonable to assume that medieval adults were not aware of any of these limitations.

This does not mean that children were never expected to do any household work or help their parents in their business enterprise.

But for the younger members of the family, this assistance took the form of chores and simple tasks such as carrying water, herding geese and gathering fruit. The time spent on these activities was rarely a large part of the day; for the most part, the great majority of a child's early years were spent in play.1

Such play was seldom organized.

Young children amused themselves with toys and simple games, playing ball or hoops, racing, chasing each other, and engaging their imaginations as children have done for millennia. Climbing trees, walls and other structures made up much of their adventures.

Lacking specific playgrounds, they played wherever was convenient: by or in the fields, in the house or yard, even in the streets.

Boys

As boys got a little older they would wrestle, shoot with bow and arrow, and engage in mock battles with staffs and sticks. Children of both genders imitated their elders in ceremonies such as mass and marriage and in events like royal processions

Of course, life wasn't all fun and games. A child had to be educated and trained to function in society, which would take place as he grew old enough to learn and understand.

Parents were expected to train their offspring in manners, personal hygiene, and all the skills necessary to survive in a hostile world and get along with their neighbors at the same time.

Instructions for the morning routine included prayer, washing face and hands, combing hair, cleaning teeth and, if necessary, clipping nails.

One might imagine that in wealthy or noble households a servant might clean the child's shoes, sponge and brush his clothing and make his bed, but if there was no servant to do it he was supposed to do these things himself.

Diet

In a society where beer and wine were commonplace, children were to be limited to two or three glasses of wine or "small beers" (lightly alcoholic beer made from a second brewing).

Food should be consumed in moderation, and children should wait to be fed.

Manners

Young diners were instructed to wipe their knives on the trencher and not the tablecloth, wipe their cups with a napkin after drinking, and put meat scraps in a voider instead of back on the serving dish.

When entering the house they were supposed to say "God be here" and, if a holy-water strop was nearby, they were to dip their fingers and cross themselves. The manuals had plenty of advice on what not to do, as well: no throwing sticks and stones at horses, dogs or people, no fighting, swearing, or getting clothing dirty, and no imitating adults behind their backs.

Education

Education was primarily a matter for the home or monastery until the later Middle Ages, when schools began to appear in more populous areas such as London. Peasants had no incentive to teach their children to read and could rarely read much themselves. However, as guilds began to require that youths be able to read and write before they were accepted as apprentices, youngsters began to attend school more frequently.

Discipline

In all phases of training, discipline would come into practice when children strayed from what they were taught.

The primary guideline followed by medieval parents in training their children was the biblical admonishment: "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

Scolding was considered ineffectual, and cursing a child was a terrible thing.

Corporal punishment was undoubtedly the norm.

The medieval world was a dangerous place, and it could take harsh measures to prepare a child to live in it.

As children grew older, they could expect corporal punishment not only from parents but from teachers and neighbors should they be caught making mischief. This fact of life could be a deterrent to more circumspect youngsters and a rude awakening to those who thought themselves invulnerable. Pain was the medieval way of illustrating that actions had consequences.

As with all other aspects of family life, how parents handled discipline surely varied from family to family.

There is no reason to believe that, by definition, the father who dispensed corporal punishment to his child could not love that child, as well.

Leaving Home

Although the majority of children in the Middle Ages spent their childhood almost exclusively in their parents' household, there were those who left home to live with relatives, future relatives, employers, masters in trade or even virtual strangers.

It was uncommon for children to leave home before about the age of ten or twelve. Some children who did so were noble offspring of either gender who were sent to live with the family into which they would one day marry -- or even had officially already married.

In such cases, the move was less a departure from home than a transference to a new home and family.

The sons of knights occasionally lived in the castle of their father's liege-lord where they trained to be knights themselves.

Traditionally, this move was made at the age of seven, but there was no hard and fast rule, and the origins of the concept have been obscured and romanticized in later literature to the point of folklore.

Boys were just as likely to make the move at age ten or twelve or even in their early teens.

The children of poor families sometimes entered service to bring income into the household and reduce the number of mouths to feed at home.

Service seldom began before age twelve, and more frequently started well into the teens. Servants lived with fairly prosperous families and were fed and often clothed by their employers.

Any pains of separation experienced by the parents were somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that their offspring were cared for, frequently in far better a manner than they could offer themselves.

Apprenticeship also began in the teens, and as the centuries passed the age of acceptance grew older, due to the insistence on the part of the guilds that potential apprentices be able to read and write.

But in most homes, children stayed home, where they continued their lessons, played, helped their families, and experienced the joys and pains of growing up.

It has been argued that adolescence was not recognized by medieval society as a stage of life separate from adulthood, but this is not at all a certainty. To be sure, teenagers were known to take on some of the work of full-fledged adults.

But at the same time, such privileges as inheritance and land ownership were withheld in some cultures until late teen.

If a child was to leave home before reaching full maturity, the teen years were the most likely time for him to do so.

But this did not mean he was "on his own."

The move from the parents' household was almost always into another household, where the adolescent would be under the supervision of an adult who fed and clothed the teenager and to whose discipline the teen was subject.

Even as youths left their families behind and took on increasingly more difficult tasks, there was still a social structure to keep them protected and, to some extent, under control.

peasant households

In the peasant household, children provided valuable assistance to the family as early as age five or six.

This assistance took the form of simple chores and did not take up a great deal of the child's time. Such chores included fetching water, herding geese, sheep or goats, gathering fruit, nuts, or firewood, walking and watering horses, and fishing.

Older children were often enlisted to care for or at least watch over their younger siblings.

At the house, girls would help their mothers with tending a vegetable or herb garden, making or mending clothes, churning butter, brewing beer and performing simple tasks to help with the cooking. In the fields, a boy no younger than 9, and usually 12 or older, might assist his father by goading the ox while his father handled the plow.

As children reached their teens, they might continue to perform these chores unless younger siblings were there to do them, and they would most definitely increase their workloads with more demanding tasks.

Yet the most difficult of tasks were reserved for those with the most experience; handling a scythe, for example, was something that took great skill and care, and it was unlikely for an adolescent to be given the responsibility of using it during the most pressing times of harvest.

Work for teenagers was not limited to within the family; rather, it was fairly common for a teen to find work as a servant in another household.

TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD

According to common law a boy or a girl was considered a child from the time he or she was born until the age of around twelve.

At this age the child was considered capable enough to differentiate between right and wrong, thus rendering them responsible for their acts.