Children

The role of a married woman was to have babies, and women desired to have many babies because only a few of them normally would live to adulthood (see Page 294). Some women were pregnant most of their adult life. Poorer women nursed their own babies; however, most babies had wet nurses selected

Daily Life

12.4 Two Children Teasing a Cat. Annibale Carracci, between the later 16th tentury and 1609. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Gwynne Andrews Fund, and bequests of Collis P. Huntington and Ogden Mills, by exchange, 1994 [1994.142])

By the father, who evaluated the nurse’s health and character. Wet nurses were paid for their services under the terms of a contract signed by the father. Many wet nurses lactated for years because healthy women usually continue to do so when a child is suckling. Some wet nurses had babies of their own; others had older children or a baby who had recently died. Wives who did not breast-feed their own infants were more likely to conceive again sooner. Renaissance physicians did not understand why but assumed that the uterus was connected to the breasts and that menstrual blood was transformed into milk after a baby was delivered.

Toddlers did not normally roam freely around the house or yard. They were kept in wooden walk-

Ers that functioned as today’s walkers do; they had four or five wheels around a bottom rim and a narrower top rim with a seat into which the child was placed. Toddlers were also connected to their nurse, mother, or a stationary object by means of a long strap or rope. Small children had to be kept away from the fireplace, which contained not only burning wood but also boiling liquids and hot grease. Outside they had to be kept away from garbage, bodies of water, the well, and unpredictable roving dogs and other animals. Boys of about seven no longer stayed all day with their mother because they had to learn to be men. This was the age at which children were considered capable of reason. Some older boys had tutors at

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

Home, others attended a grammar or abacus school near home (see chapter 11), and others left home to be raised at court or at the home of a well-placed relative. Around the age of 14 boys became young men who could enter an apprenticeship, become sailors, join the army, begin studying for the priesthood, or simply work at menial labor. In very poor families children aged nine or even younger were sent to work as servants in wealthy houses, chiefly because their parents could no longer afford to feed them. In spite of entering the adult world so early, between the ages of eight and 14, most boys and girls did not experience puberty until the age of 15 or even later.

ORPHANS

Orphans whose parents had been married and were deceased enjoyed a special status in Renaissance society, as opposed to foundlings (abandoned children), generally referred to as bastards. During the 15th century both classes of parentless children were usually cared for by the same hospitals operating as care centers. Some of these institutions had a horizontal wheel beside an interior wall that could be rotated from outside the wall and positioned in front of an opening. The foundling was placed on the wheel, which was then turned again to take the infant into the hospital anonymously. Some community leaders complained that providing institutions for unwanted children encouraged immorality, but others argued that the rather undesirable alternative was infanticide. Foundlings who survived to become older children were often able to make their way in the world, working as laborers or servants and occasionally even being adopted by childless couples. By the 16th century separate foundations were being established for orphans, endowed with money for education, clothing, and other provisions. One unfortunate result was even greater discrimination against foundlings.