. In medieval France, people defined childhood according to the Roman categories of the Ages of Man: early childhood ended at age seven, and puberty was legally established at age twelve for girls, fourteen for boys. A great deal of legal capacity and responsibility was already attributed to children and adolescents in medieval France. A child of seven could be engaged to be married, enter minor clerical orders, hold a benefice without cure of souls, and sometimes be held responsible for crimes. On reaching puberty, an individual might marry, confirm a religious vocation, hold a benefice with cure of souls, be a witness in civil cases, and consistently be held responsible for crimes. Yet a person was not considered to have reached full adulthood until the age of twenty-five, and the word adolescens might qualify men as old as thirty.
The care and treatment of children are documented sparsely until the late Middle Ages, from which period date texts concerning children of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Babies then usually received a ritual bath immediately after birth and were baptized the following day. They were breast-fed on demand by the mother or sometimes a wet-nurse and given gruel until about age two, when they adopted an adult diet.
Babies were swaddled for the first year, then dressed in loose robes. Children played with dolls, balls, hobby horses, and tops and at such games as hide-and-seek, hopscotch, and blind-man’s-bluff. Although childraising was more a female than a male concern, fathers often participated in all the tasks of childraising except, apparently, hygiene. By the age of seven, many children, if not enrolled in a school, were sent outside the family—to train to be a knight, to enter clerical or religious orders, to train as an apprentice, or to work directly—according to the social status of the child’s family.
About one out of three children fell victim to the high infant-mortality rate before the age of five. This fact, among others, has led some historians, like Philippe Ariès, to argue that parent-child relationships could not have been very intense, but recently such historians as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Danièle Alexandre-Bidon have emphasized the warmth and intensity of parental attachment evident in many texts.
Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle, and Monique Closson. L’enfant a l’ombre des cathédra les. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon/CNRS, 1985.
Metz, René. “L’enfant dans le droit canonique médiéval: orientations de recherche.” In Recueil de la Société Jean Bodin. Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie Encyclopédique de Bruxelles, 1976, Vol. 36: L’enfant.
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