The average Mongol family would not consist of more than two generations of adults, and the norm would be the two parents and their unmarried children. Common to many Eurasian families, the youngest son would continue to live with the family after his marriage because it was the youngest son who would inherit the homestead.
For the most part the women of the Mongol empire led a hard life, sharing most of the hardships but few of the pleasures with their men folk. Mongol women had the right to own property and to divorce, but full equality was far from a reality. In fact Mongol society was obviously a society in which some women were more equal than others, as a mission of Franciscan friars observed on a journey to the Mongol Empire in 1245-47.
[The Mongols] have as many wives as they can afford, and generally buy them, so that except for women of noble birth they are mere chattels. They marry anyone they please, except their mother, daughter, and sister from the same mother. When their father dies, they marry their step-mother, and a younger brother or cousin marries his brother's widow. The wives do all the work, and make shoes, leather garments, and so on, while the men make nothing but arrows, and practice shooting with bows. They compel even boys three or four years old to the same exercise, and even some of the women, especially the maidens, practice archery and ride as a rule like men. If people are taken in adultery and fornication, man and woman alike are slain.’
The friars were no apologists for the Mongols, and other reports suggest that women generally enjoyed more equitable treatment within the tribe. After Chinggis Khan's first wife, Borte, was kidnapped, Chinggis spared no effort to get her back, and once safely within his ordu (camp), she resumed her position of chief wife, and her unborn child, Chinggis's firstborn, Jochi, was later awarded the respect due to the firstborn son of the Great Khan despite his questionable parentage.
World History
