Children In The Middle Ages

The middle ages were a time full of warfare, feudalism, and poverty which caused children to have to skip their childhood and help out their families. Children raised during the present day compared to the middle ages have it easy, childhood during the dark ages was much shorter and focused on work. One-fourth of children died their first year of living and one-sixth didn’t live to see their fourth birthday. Life went by fast back then, kids commonly married at 12 and 14.

The average life expectancy was in the 40s, so they were expected to mature early and act like adults. Most children didn’t get to experience the warm-hearted childhood that is common in the present day.

Children during the middle ages were expected to do adult tasks. Around the age of 7 boys were taken from home to begin training to be a knight or sire. Other children began working and doing household tasks. Children were usually expected to do things like feed livestock or farm animals, wash dishes, or care for younger siblings.

As the kids would reach their teens their workload would get heavier, it was even common that the teen would find a job as a servant in another household.

If you were even around the age of 7 and had younger siblings, you would have to help your mother take care of them and do other tasks around the house. As you can see the working lifestyle was very influenced on people of all ages and today people start doing household tasks or chores as teenagers.

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Life was already harsh among people back then due to the black plague, and most of the population going through poverty so I can only imagine how difficult times had to be.

A huge period of the population was poor during this period and this affected childhood matters. Peasants lived in small cottages that had small windows and were mostly dark, and adults often cut down their old clothes to make clothes for children. Everyone during the middle ages lacked electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, air conditioning, telephones, and more things that we have now. If life was even this difficult for even the wealthy just imagine how hard it would be for a working peasant child.

Noble medieval children were mostly educated during training to become knights, they needed to read and write to understand the code of chivalry. Poor medieval children’s only hope was to be educated by a priest who taught them a basic understanding of how to read and write. There were some grammar schools in towns during the late medieval times going on to the renaissance where middle-class children were given an education. Discipline was strictly maintained in grammar schools and boys were often beaten. There were also some chantry schools where priests taught children how to read and write.

Medieval children were mostly illiterate. Most children didn’t go to school, only children with wealthy families went, and the ones that didn’t receive knowledge from word of mouth. Instead of school children would do tasks like scaring birds from fields and collecting eggs from chickens. The older age groups like teens would do more difficult tasks. Low-class parents thought of school as a waste of time when there were more productive things to be done to help their parents.

The way children lived was determined by social and biological factors, however, the biggest part of the population lived in poverty which greatly affected children’s childhood. The lifestyle of the present-day and the middle ages is very different, and the lifestyle that they lived gives me the conclusion that they did not have a concept of childhood. Children during the middle ages simply had to mature too early. I feel as though everything during the dark ages was rushed, marriage, working, and life itself because of the life expectancy.