Training Children for Adulthood

Sources

Home Training. It is difficult to make a distinction between the education of children and their training for work. At an early age, children in the countryside accompanied their parents as they worked. Gradually children were assigned their own tasks in the household or fields. This work was essential to the well-being of the family, but at the same time it was part of the process by which children learned the skills they needed as adults. Similarly, the children of craftsmen learned their trade at their parents’ knees, watching and then helping with simple tasks. Surviving images have shown quite small children helping to press wine, running alongside a plow, watching their mother as she feeds animals, and generally getting underfoot as they followed their parents at work. Such times gave parents opportunities to explain to their children what they were doing and why.

Chores. As soon as they were able, children were assigned tasks such as feeding chickens, weeding the garden, collecting firewood, running errands, bringing water from the local well, or carrying meals to workers in the fields. Boys frequently looked after the family’s animals, herding the sheep, watching the geese or pigs, or leading the plow horse. In addition to helping in the garden, girls often watched younger children, mended clothes, and helped in the house with cooking and cleaning. Girls, however, also helped in the fields and watched grazing animals. These tasks were considered relatively light and suitable for children, but they were not without their difficulties or dangers. It was generally considered inappropriate for children to take on heavier chores until they had grown firm and strong, at about the age of twelve.

Manorial Duties. In castles and manor houses there were many young children scampering around, combining work and play. The large kitchens necessary to feed a complex household that included a noble and his family, servants, and retainers needed many young helpers. These children, usually boys, turned spits over fires, plucked chickens, swept floors, and carried out the garbage. Occasionally, young children were also musicians and entertainers in the halls. Boys might also serve as stable hands and, in the process, learn the valuable skills of riding and caring for horses. Children sometimes cared for the hunting dogs as well.

City Chores. City children also worked at a young age. They might help in the family’s shop or sell wares on the streets, as well as performing small chores in the house, similar to the tasks of country children. When they were between ten and twelve, city children were expect to enter service or apprenticeship and to begin working or learning a trade in a systematic fashion.

Sources

Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth-Fifteenth Centuries, translated by Jody Gladding (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).

Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London & New York: Routledge, 1990).