Was there a medieval childhood?
An older claim holds that medieval people did not recognize childhood as a distinct stage of life and treated children as small adults. Most historians now reject that view. Medieval writers described stages of growth, parents mourned lost children, and laws and customs treated the young differently from adults. Childhood looked different from today’s, and it varied by social rank, but it clearly existed.
Birth and the first days
Most births took place at home, with female relatives, neighbors and often a midwife in attendance, since medieval midwives were the usual specialists in childbirth. Childbirth was dangerous for both mother and child, and prayers, charms and the help of saints were common parts of preparation. Families also paid attention to the child’s survival from the first hours.
Baptism usually took place within days, because the church taught that an unbaptized child was in spiritual danger. In an emergency, a midwife or another lay person could baptize a newborn who seemed unlikely to survive. Godparents were chosen as spiritual sponsors, and they formed a network of support, since they could be expected to help the child later in life. Names were often given for a godparent or a saint.
Feeding and care
Breast-feeding was the norm. In wealthier families, a wet nurse was sometimes hired, while many mothers fed their own infants. Babies were often swaddled in strips of cloth, and cradles were common. Many children did not reach adulthood. Historians generally believe that child mortality was high, especially in the first years of life, though the exact figures are uncertain and differed by place, period and season. Famine, disease and accidents all took their toll.
Play and learning
Children played, and archaeology and manuscript illustrations show it. Toys that survive or appear in images include rattles, small figures, simple dolls, hobby horses, tops, balls and miniature pots. Children played games such as hide-and-seek, tag and knucklebones. Older children imitated adult activities, and boys of noble families sometimes practiced with wooden swords.
Learning often meant imitation. Girls and boys in a village learned by watching parents and joining in. Parents also taught prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer, and basic religious ideas. Reading and writing were available to only some children. A boy who showed promise might attend a church or monastic school, or a town school, while girls in some wealthy families learned to read at home or in a convent. Medieval schooling is a separate subject, but it is worth remembering that most children never attended any.
The church sometimes spoke of seven as an age when a child began to reason, and this affected expectations about confession and responsibility. This was a guideline rather than a fixed legal rule, and it shaped how adults thought about a child’s growing accountability.
Early work
Work began early in poorer households. A young child might gather firewood, feed hens, fetch water or mind younger siblings. Children also scared birds from the crops, herded geese or sheep, and helped at harvest. In towns, children ran errands, carried goods or helped in a family workshop. The tasks were usually adjusted to age, so that a small child did light tasks while a teenager took on a more demanding share.
Many families sent teenagers to work in another household, a practice usually called service. Girls might work as domestic servants or dairymaids, and boys might work as farm hands or shop boys. Wages were typically modest, but this arrangement allowed families to relieve pressure on their own resources and gave young people experience. Those who entered a craft often did so through apprenticeship contracts, which set out the terms of training and the master’s duties in a town setting. Apprentices typically lived with the master’s family for several years, and the arrangement was meant to be a legal relationship as well as a personal one.
Children of the nobility
The experience of noble children was different. Boys of aristocratic families were often sent around the age of seven or later to another noble household to be trained as pages, learning manners, riding and the use of weapons. Later they might become squires. Girls were often trained in household management, needlework and sometimes reading, and many were prepared for an arranged marriage. Fostering children in another household was also a way of building alliances.
Some children were dedicated to the church. Boys and girls could be placed in a monastery or convent, a practice often called oblation in the earlier centuries. By the later Middle Ages, the church increasingly stressed that those entering religious life should do so willingly, though practice did not always follow the ideal.
Discipline and affection
Medieval advice writers usually accepted physical discipline as part of upbringing, as did many later societies, although some warned against excessive harshness. At the same time, there is evidence of real affection: letters, wills, tombs and miracle stories show parents seeking help when a child was ill. Stories recorded at saints’ shrines often describe desperate parents making vows and pilgrimages for a sick child, which says a good deal about how much a child’s survival mattered.
Orphans and legal protection
Children whose fathers died were sometimes placed under guardianship. In towns and in some manors, there were customs for protecting an orphan’s inheritance until the child reached a certain age, although the rules varied and abuses did occur. Illegitimate children generally faced legal disadvantages with regard to inheritance, although they were not always shut out of family support.
What we can and cannot say
Sources on childhood are thin, because adults wrote most records, and children rarely appear in them except through baptism, legal cases, wills, and tales of miracles. Archaeological finds and images help fill the gap. A careful reading suggests a childhood that was shorter in terms of work and responsibility than ours, and more uncertain in terms of survival, but nevertheless recognized as a distinct phase of life.