Chapter 20 Outine A History Of Western Society Ap Euro

Chapter 20 Outline Marriage and the Family •

The basic unit of social organization is the family.

Extended and Nuclear Families • •

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In many traditional Asian and African societies, the typical family has often been an extended family. The family is a big, three- or four- generation clan, headed by a patriarch or perhaps a matriarch, and encompassing everyone from the youngest infant to the oldest grandparent. Extended families provide security for adults and children in traditional agrarian peasant economies. Sociologists have frequently assumed that the extended family gives way to the conjugal, or nuclear, family with the advent of industrialization and urbanization. Nuclear families, couples establish their own households when they marry, and they raise their children apart from their parents. Most people did not marry young in the 17th century and early 18th century. Both men and women married for the first time at an average age of twenty seven or older in the 17th and 18th century. The custom of late marriage combined with a nuclear family household was a distinctive characteristic of European society. This pattern of marriage normally joined a mature man and a mature woman. Marriage delayed: was that couples normally could not marry until they could support themselves economically. The land was the main source of income. There were also laws and community controls to temper impetuous love and physical attraction. Prudence, law, and custom combined to postpone the march to the altar.

Work Away from Home •

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A young man would drift from one tough job to another: hired hand for a small farmer, wage laborer on a new road, carrier of water in a nearby town. Girls also temporarily left their families to work, at an early age and in large numbers. Service in another’s family’s household most common job. Varka – the Russian servant girl in Chekhov’s chilling story “Sleepy”—who, driven beyond exhaustion, finally quieted her mistress’s screaming child by strangling it in its cradle. Physical mistreatment by their mistresses. There was also the pressure of seducers and sexual attack. Domestic service offered protection and security within a new family for a young girl leaving home. Prostitution and petty thievery were often the harsh consequences of unwanted pregnancy.

Premarital Sex and Community Controls

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Illegitimate babies were apparently a rarity, at least as far as the official church records are concerned. Premarital sex was clearly common place. Pregnancy simply set the marriage date once and for all. Combination of very low rates of illegitimate birth with large numbers of pregnant brides also reflected the powerful community controls of the traditional village particularly the open-field village, with its pattern of cooperation and common action. These controls meant in the countryside that premarital sex was not entered into lightly and that it was generally limited to those contemplating marriage. Degrading public rituals- to punish them. The donkey ride and similar colorful humiliations ranging from rotten vegetables splattered on the doorstep to obscene and insulting midnight serenades were common punishments throughout much of Europe. Community controls did not extend to family planning. Birth control within marriage was not unknown in western and central Europe. The most common method was coitus interruptus—withdrawal by the male before ejaculation. The “fast set” of London used the “sheath” regularly, although primarily to protect against venereal disease.

New Patterns of Marriage and Illegitimacy • • • • •

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The number of illegitimate births soared between about 1750 and 1850 as much of Europe experienced an illegitimacy explosion. Fewer young women were abstaining from premarital sex, and more importantly, fewer young men were marrying the women they got pregnant. Thus a profound sexual and cultural transformation took place. The meaning of this transformation: two interrelated ideas. First, the growth cottage industry created new opportunities not tied to the land. Scolding did not stop cottage workers from marrying for love rather than for economic considerations as they blazed a path that factory workers would follow in the 19th century. Second, the needs of a growing population sent many young villagers to towns and cities in searc of temporary or permanent employment. Mobility in turn encouraged new sexual and marital relationships. Most young women in urban areas found work only as servants or textile workers. They looked mainly to marriage and family life as an escape from hard work and as the foundation of a satisfying life. Promises of marriage from a man of the working girl’s own class often led to sex, which was widely viewed as serious courtship. Many soldiers, day laborers and male servants were no doubt sincere in their proposals. Thus it became increasingly difficult for a woman to convert into marriage.

Children and Education •

Childhood itself was dangerous because of adult indifference, neglect, and even abuse.

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Schools and formal education played only a modest role in the lives of ordinary children, and many boys and many more girls never learned to read.

Child Care and Nursing • • •

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Women of the lower classes generally breast- fed their infants and for a much longer period than is customary today. Breast- feeding decreases the likelihood of pregnancy for the average woman by delaying the resumption of ovulation. Nursing also saved lives: the breast fed infant received precious immunity- producing substances with its mother’s milk and was more likely to survive than when it was given any artificial food. The upper class woman felt that breast feeding was crude, common, and undignified. She hired a wet nurse to suckle her child. Wet- nursing was a very widespread and flourishing. Flaws of wet- nursing: it was a common belief that with her milk a nurse passed her bad traits to her baby. Killing nurses: with whom no ever child survived. The nurse let the child die quickly so that she could take another child and another fee.

Foundlings and Infanticide • • • •

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The early medieval church, strongly infanticide as a pagan practice and insisted that every human life was sacred. The willful destruction of newborn children became a crime punishable by death. Many cases “overlaying”—parents rolling over and suffocating the child between them in their bed. Abortions were illegal. Saint Vincent de Paul was so distressed by the number of babies brought to the steps of Notre Dame in Paris that he established a home for foundlings. Foundling Homes first took hold in Italy, Spain, and France. In much of Europe in the 18th century, foundling homes emerged as a favorite charity of the rich and powerful. Foundling Homes in the 18th century were a good example of Christian charity and social concern in an age of great poverty and inequality. A foundling home was no panacea. 50 percent of the babies normally died within a year. Fully 90 percent did not survive. So great was the carnage that some contemporaries called the foundling hospitals “legalized infanticide.”

Attitudes toward Children • •

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The practice of using wet nurses is one example of how even the rich and the prosperous put the child out of sight and out of mind. Feelings toward children were greatly influenced by the terrible frequency of death among children of all classes. 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote that “the death of a new born child before that of its parents may seem unnatural but it is a strictly

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probable event, since of any given number the greater part are extinguished before the ninth year, before they possess the faculties of the mind and the body.” The medical establishment was a seldom interested in the care of children, Children were neglected because they were likely to die, and they were likely to die because they were neglected. Emotional detachment from children often shaded off into abuse, Novelist, Daniel Defoe (1659-1731), “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Susannah Wesley (1669-1742)—“to conquer the will, and bring them to an obedient temper.” Jean- Jacques Rousseau—Emile: called for greater love and tenderness toward children and proposed imaginative new teaching methods that also constructed rigid gender differences. Swaddling: wrapping youngsters in tight- fitting clothes and blankets was generally believed to form babies properly by “straightening them out.”

Schools and Popular Literature • • •

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The role of schools and formal education outside the home was also growing more important. Special colleges often ran by Jesuits. Schools specialized in boys and girls from seven to twelve, who were taught basic literacy and religion. Both Protestant and Catholic reformers pushed reading as a means of instilling their teachings more effectively. Prussia led the way in the development of universal education, inspired by the old Protestant idea that every believer should be able to read and study the bible in the quest for personal salvation and by the new idea of a population capable of effectively serving the state. France: the only Catholic land to promote elementary education enthusiastically in the 148th century. The growth in literacy promoted a growth in reading. The major philosophical works of the Enlightenment had little impact on the peasants and workers. The Bible remained the overwhelming favorite; the staple of popular literature was short pamphlets known as chapbooks. They featured Bible stories, prayers, devotions, and the lives of Saints and exemplary Christians. It gave the believer moral teachings and a confidence in God that helped in daily living. Entertaining, often humorous stories formed a second element of popular literature. The significance of these entertaining stories for the peasant reader is debated. Finally, some popular literature was highly practical, dealing with rural crafts, household repairs, useful plants, and similar matters. Much of such lore was stored in almanacs. In general, the reading of the common people had few similarities with that of the educated elite. The common people were apparently content with works that reinforced traditional values and did not foster social or religious criticism.