Ages of Woman, Ages of Man

Sources in European Social History, 1400-1750

Merry Wiesner Hanks, Monica Chojnacka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317875802
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

The collection is organized around two main principles, stages of life and gender, and is divided into eight chapters: childhood, youth and sexuality, courtship and weddings, married life, economic life, networks and communities, and widowhood and old age. The sources address the numerous and varied ways in which women and men's notions of themselves affected their lives, and explore how accepted norms of masculine and feminine behaviour influenced social, economic, and religious change. Guided by a general editors' introduction and then an introduction to each chapter, the user will find this an invaluable reference companion to early modern gender history.

1

CHILDHOOD

Childhood was a perilous stage of life in early modern Europe. Many children died young – about half before they reached the age of five – and many also lost one or both parents, so that families frequently contained half-siblings, step-siblings, and foster children. It began with an event that could itself be dangerous – childbirth. Using English statistics, it has been estimated that the maternal mortality rate in the early modern period was about 1 percent for each birth. Most women experienced multiple childbirths successfully, but all of them knew someone who had died in childbed. Thus women took care to be tended by experienced friends and relatives, or to use the services of professional midwives where these were available. Male physicians took little interest in delivery, and were generally called in only if the child or mother or both were dead or dying, so their presence was dreaded. In the middle of the seventeenth century, a few male barber-surgeons in France and England began to advertise their services for childbirth, and having a ‘man-midwife’ became fashionable for wealthy families. Female midwives continued to handle the vast majority of, and in eastern and southern Europe all, births, however.

The actual techniques of delivery varied widely, even within the same town. Some midwives and mothers preferred to use a birthing stool, a special padded stool with handles which tipped the mother back slightly; other mothers lay in bed, kneeled, stood, or sat in another woman’s lap. The level of intervention also varied from midwife to midwife. Some tried to speed the birth along by making the mother change positions or pulling on the child as it emerged, while others might wait for days during a very difficult labor before attempting to interfere. The most skillful and best-trained midwives took a middle route, intervening only when they thought it necessary. Midwives were responsible for the spiritual as well as the physical well-being of the children they delivered, for they were allowed to perform emergency baptisms on children they thought might die.

Just as women recognized the dangers of birth, parents recognized the dangers of childhood and tried to protect their children with religious amulets and pilgrimages to special shrines, made toys for them, and sang them lullabies. Even practices which to us may seem cruel, such as wrapping children tightly with bands of cloth (termed ‘swaddling’), were motivated by a concern for the child’s safety and health at a time when most households had open fires, domestic animals wandered freely, and mothers and older siblings were doing work which prevented them from continually watching a toddler. Paintings from the period show small children in wheeled walkers which kept them safer until they learned to walk securely, and women’s diaries inform us that they led their toddlers on ‘leading-strings’ attached to their clothing to prevent them from falling or wandering.

In most parts of Europe, boys inherited family land while girls generally did not, and in all parts of Europe, men were regarded as superior to women. These practices and attitudes led parents to favor the birth of sons over daughters. Girls significantly outnumbered boys in most orphanages or foundling homes, as poor parents decided their sons would ultimately be more useful; infants had a much poorer chance of survival in orphanages than they did if cared for by their parents. Occasionally parents who could not care for their children killed them outright, but these cases are quite rare and generally involve desperate unwed mothers; we cannot tell from the records whether girls were more likely to be killed than boys, for the court records generally simply refer to ‘child’ or ‘infant’.

It is difficult to know whether boys and girls were treated very differently when they were infants and small children. Children were all dressed alike in long dress-like garments for the first several years of their lives, rather than put into pink or blue outfits as is often common in contemporary Weslem culture. Until they were about seven, children of both sexes were cared for by women, generally their own mothers if they were poor and servants or nurse-maids if they were wealthy. It was when children began their training for adult life, at the age of four or five, that clear distinctions became evident. Girls of all classes were taught skills that they would use in running a household – spinning, sewing, cooking, care of domestic animals; peasant girls were also taught some types of agricultural tasks. Boys also began to learn the skills they would use later – assisting fathers in their work or working in the fields. If parents themselves could read, they might begin teaching their children to read along with teaching them practical skills, or send them to a primary school if one was available. The vast majority of people in early modern Europe did not learn to read, however; they were not necessarily uneducated, for they may have been very highly skilled in a trade and astute about the world around them, but this education came through oral tradition and training, not through books.

Many children began to work when they were very young; boys as young as seven might be apprenticed to a man other than their father to learn his trade, and girls at that age sent to another household to be a domestic servant or, more rarely, an apprentice in a trade. Arrangements for apprenticeship or foster care were generally made with legal documents, many of which have survived. The young age at which children were often sent away from their parents in these documents has been used as evidence of parental coldness, but can also be used as evidence that parents cared about their children’s future, and tried to improve their prospects. Though poor children and orphans were most likely to be sent away, wealthier children often left home at a young age as well. In northern Europe in particular, even noble children might be sent at eight or nine to the homes of even wealthier and more prominent people, with the expectation they would learn good manners and make acquaintances and contacts that would later lead to favorable marriages or help them in their careers.

BIRTH AND INFANCY

1 Ordinance regulating midwives, Germany 1522

Women in early modern Europe, like those in most of the world’s cultures in most periods, generally gave birth assisted by female relatives and friends. Women who had particular talents or inclination were often called to assist more often, and gradually such women began taking payment for their work, evolving into professional midwives. Midwives were trained by watching and helping more experienced midwives, but beginning in the sixteenth century in some parts of Europe city governments began to regulate midwifery and require midwives to swear an oath if they wished to obtain a license. This is the first midwives’ ordinance from the south German city of Nuremberg, which served as a model for many other cities.

(Nuremberg Staatsarchiv, Amts-und Standbücher Nr. 100, fs. 101–105. Translated by Merry Wiesner-Hanks.)

Every midwife should give her oath and swear she will conscientiously care for and stand by every expectant mother in her time of need to whom she is called, whether she is rich or poor, to the best of her abilities and understanding. She should proceed to whomever she is called first, immediately and without opposition, and make absolutely no excuses or delays, as has often been the case, but faithfully stand by her. Also no woman is to be hurried or forced to deliver before the proper time; she should wait and hold out until the appropriate time.

If the thing [the delivery] looks like it will be dangerous, she should call one or two of the women who oversee midwifery and proceed with the emergency according to their advice. In no case is she to wait or delay to call them until the need is so great they cannot handle it, or she will warrant serious punishment.

If it happens that the birth takes so long and the first midwife has a pressing need to rest or sleep for a while, she should call another sworn midwife and not an apprentice, who will then be just as responsible to appear immediately without opposition. She should then steadfastly and helpfully care for the woman in labor just as if she had been called at first. If it happens that this second midwife is caring for another expectant mother at the time she is called, she should stay with this one and send another midwife to the other birth.

If any midwives show themselves to be disobedient or disagreeable, the city council will not only remove them from office, but will also punish them severely, so that all will know to shape up and watch their behavior.

The council has certainly experienced that the midwives deal very deceitfully and for their own profit with the Arme Kindbetterin Almosen [a city fund for poor expectant mothers] running back and forth to respectable women, who do not need the alms, promising them bedding and lard and other things if they will agree to call them as midwives. These lucrative operations are leading to a decline and breakdown of the Almosen. Because the council sees this with no little displeasure, from now on the midwives will be sworn by their oaths not to run after these women, or promise them the Almosen, but to refrain from this completely. If the council discovers any further incidents, she [the midwife] will be let out of her office, and will be punished in each case according to the severity of the deed, however the council decides.

From now on no midwife will be allowed to take on an apprentice who has begun with a different midwife and left her without justifiable cause, but every apprentice shall stay with the woman with whom she started. Justifiable and legitimate cause for leaving may be proven to the council or to those appointed by it. In such cases, the apprentice will not be forbidden to complete her training years with another sworn midwife. In this case, the woman that caused the apprentice to leave through her unfairness and unreasonableness will not be allowed to take on another apprentice until the end of the training years of the first.

They should not take on any flighty, young apprentices, as it so often happens that they marry during the course of their training and that all sorts of injuries result from their inexperience. They should rather take on apprentices well advanced in years and preferably living alone, from whom one expects more diligence than from younger ones.

They should also not allow themselves to drink wine in excess, as all kinds of injury and harm have been inflicted on the pregnant women because of this. The council has decided to punish severely any who break this restriction.

The honorable council has discovered that the midwives often send their maids (who have not completed their instruction or who have just completed it and have no experience yet) alone to women who are giving birth for the first time, through which these women are often neglected and deplorably injured. Therefore the honorable council orders that from now on no maid, whether she has half-completed her training or not, is to attend alone any woman bearing her first or second child, whether she goes with the knowledge of her instructor or not. After the passing of the normal years of training, the apprentice shall carry out her first birth in the presence of her instructor. In the case that the instructor is dead or not there, another sworn, experienced midwife should be present. Anyone who is convicted of this will be punished to the extent that the council’s displeasure with the deed can be felt.

The high honorable council has also had enough of midwives taking their proper salary for poor women not only from the established overseer of the charity [the Arme Kindbetterin Almosen] but also from the women themselves, and therefore receiving double payment. This gives the honorable council great displeasure. Because of this the midwives are to swear that when they receive their proper salary (that, due to persuasive reasons, has been set at 20 kreuzer for each birth) from the overseer for caring for a poor woman, they are not to demand or want anything more, but let themselves be completely satisfied with their established salary. All of this is liable to punishment, which the high honorable council will set each time according to the crime and opportunities of the case.

Recently evil cases have taken place, that those women who live in sin and adultery have illegitimate children, and during birth or before purposefully attempt to kill them by taking harmful, abortion-causing drugs, or through other notorious means. Some of these cases never come to the attention of the authorities, and proper punishment for them cannot be carried out. This the high honorable council, because of the God-given authority it carries, can no longer tolerate. Therefore they have made the recommendation that the midwives’ oath be added to. They are to swear yearly, that when one of them is called to deliver a baby for such a woman, one who is carrying an illegitimate child, she [the midwife] is obliged to ask with intent what the name of the child’s mother is, and who the child’s father is. As soon as she has brought the child into the world, she is to report to the Lord Mayor whether the child is alive or dead, who its mother and father are, and where the mother is lying in bed. Also no dead illegitimate children are to be carried to the grave before she gives her report to the Lord Mayor. At least three or four unsuspected female persons are to go with the child to the grave. If one or more of the midwives act against this, and will not comply with what has been sent forth above, the high honorable council will deal with them as perjurers with corporal punishment. Then they will finally know to conform to this.

[Changes in and additions to the regulations were made fairly regularly, and in 1579 were codified and reissued along with the original 1522 ordinance:]

On the request of the sworn midwives to the high honorable council to improve their ordinance in several various points, this further pronouncement is to be published, to bring the following improvements to their ordinances.

First: The midwives have sworn in their oaths not to send or use an apprentice during her normal training years to a woman having her first baby, but have requested to have this limited to only the first quarter-year. The high honorable council believes this to be much too short a time, and will set the limit at one year. Therefore from now on no midwife should send a maid to a woman having her first child unless she has completed one year of her training program.

Second: It has often come about that some midwives who were with women during their labor run away from them and to others, without caring that this is utterly and completely against their sworn duties. Through this running away many births are hurried, and it should be severely punished. Therefore, when, from now on, one or more midwives leave a woman in need, without calling another sworn midwife to come in their place, they will be required to pay the high honorable council a five gulden fine, without exception.

Third: Some women have allowed their little children to be carried to holy baptism by strange people when the midwife was too busy, although such small children are easily harmed and injured. Therefore, the high honorable council orders that from now on all new-born children are to be carried to holy baptism by their sworn midwife or her apprentice. Any midwife will be fined two gulden if she breaks this ordinance.

Fourth: No midwife is to send her children or servants to a baptism, nor ask for anything to take home to them, with a fine of two gulden.

Fifth: No midwife is to take on a maid-apprentice without the knowledge of the overseers of midwifery. No maid-apprentice is to be accepted who is married or has her own household, but only those who are single or widowed, so that these persons are not called away from their instructors to their private business or housework, and will always be available. They should not live in the midwife’s house, but in the neighborhood, and should keep themselves occupied at all times.

Sixth: Some maid-apprentices have been wantonly leaving their mistresses and continuing their training with others, which is not only not to be tolerated but specifically forbidden in the midwives’ ordinance. In order to deal with this the high honorable council has decided that from now on no maid-apprentice who has left her mistress before the completion of her proper training period without justifiable cause may be taken on or instructed by another midwife. These maids have forfeited the office [of sworn midwif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Geographic table of contents
• Introduction
• 1 CHILDHOOD
• 2 YOUTH, SEXUALITY, AND THE SINGLE LIFE
• 3 COURTSHIP, LOVE, AND WEDDINGS
• 4 MARRIED LIFE
• 5 ECONOMIC LIFE
• 6 RELIGION
• 7 NETWORKS
• 8 WIDOWHOOD AND OLD AGE
• List of contributors