1. Family Structure & Family Economy
AP European History

2. Life under the Ancien Régime
“Absolute” monarchies
exceptions are British and Dutch
Rights are corporate
people are entitled to rights privileges or exempt from duties based on their membership in a social class
Both peasants and nobles want to maintain traditional structure to protect their perceived rights.
Noble exemption from taxation
Ex.: French nobility’s exemption from the corvée and taille
Peasant access to manorial lands
English peasants have more “rights” but upper classes pull all the strings
English Game Laws

3. Eastern European serfdom
Peasants tied legally to the land
Exploited and abused
Landowners exercise judicial rights over serfs
Basically slavery

4. La Nain Brothers Peasant Family in an Interior (c. 1642)

5. Family Structure Family = basic unit of production/consumption
All goods/income to the benefit of household
People lived within a household because
It was virtually impossible for ordinary people to support themselves independently
Most Europeans lived in rural areas
Family Economy and Structure
Differed between Western and Eastern Europe

6. Western Europe
Household consisted of a married couple, their children thru early teen years and servants
usually not more than 5-6 members
people married relatively late
“neolocalism”
Men were over 26, Women were over 23, Why?
difficult to support themselves,
need time to acquire assets
results in lower birth rates
Wealthier classes marry earlier
Nuclear rather than extended family
Due to high mortality rates AND late marriages more than two generations of a family rarely lived under the same roof
Often second-families (widows/half/steps)

7. Women & Children Women Children Marriage = economic necessity
Maintain parents’ household and then work outside the home to save money for a dowry
Money necessary to start a household upon marriage
Once married, worked to make money or engaged in subsistence farming to provide for the household.
Bearing and rearing children usually subordinate
Only aristocratic women and those in religious orders could live outside this pattern (20% never marry)
Children
Childbirth is dangerous, IMR is high
More children not always wanted
infanticide
many abandoned children (unwanted, illegitimate)
“foundling” hospitals
Upper-classes educate their children for new economy
Most children remain uneducated/illiterate

9. Western Europe Subsistence farming
Growing food or other products that could be exchanged for food
Usually not enough land
Family members might labor outside for wages
Often, women and children left behind to maintain household while father migrated for work.
Urban artisans
Relied on family as apprentices, shopkeepers
Death of father could devastate Western European family
Not so much in the East because of multigenerational and extended nature of the family there.
Western Europe

10. Subsistence Farming

11. Did you say servants?
Children lived with their parents until early teens
leave home, usually to enter the workforce
Children of skilled artisans might stay longer to learn valuable skills
Children earned more money working outside the home
Worked for room, board, wages and training

12. Eastern Europe

13. Eastern Europe
Both men and women usually married before the age of twenty (lower avg. age)
near universal rates of marriage
marriage involved expanding on an already established family, rather than starting a new household
high birthrates coupled with high death rates
large, multi-generational households
Households were generally larger than West
Extended family
due to early marriage, it was possible to have three or more generations of family living together

14. “Western European Marriage Pattern” Hajnal Line