The Family
The family was the basic unit of production and consumption in
pre-industrial Northwestern Europe. Many of its features described
below were inherited from the feudal middle ages through the "Ancien
Regime" under the Habsburg monarchs, survived the French occupation
and start to wane in Belgium only after the onset of the industrial
revolution around 1830. The household mode of organization
predominated on farms, in artisans' workshops and in small merchants'
shops. This developed into what is known as the family
economy.
A household
almost invariably consisted of a married
couple, their children through their early teenage years, and the
servants. Usually the household had only 5-6 members and more than
two generations living together was unusual. High mortality and late
marriages precluded extended families of three generations:
grandparents rarely lived with their children and grandchildren.
Children were an integral part of the household
economy but in their early teens usually left to work in a household
other than their own. An exception might be a child of an artisan who
remained to acquire the valuable skills of his/her parent(s). In
general, whether a child remained to work at home or went elsewhere
depended on which way they could contribute most to the income of
their own family. Sometimes when the family was on the edge of
becoming destitute the children might be sent or allowed to work.
Children often would be expected to work
excessive hours and in dangerous
situations.
Young people would eventually would leave home to
marry and start an independent household of their own. The age of
marriage was relatively late: over 26 years for men and for women
over 23 years. After marriage they soon started a family of their
own. It was not unusual for marriage to occur after a long courtship
when the woman was already pregnant. The new family would soon employ
a servant who, with their growing children, would contribute to
whatever form of livelihood the household used to
support itself.
The term servant
in this context was quite different from
that describing a person who worked for a wealthier family, usually
of a higher social class. In the usual rural family unit a servant
was not necessarily of a lower class and ate and lived 'almost' as a
family member. Being a servant as long as 10 years was a means of
acquire skills, often not learnable at home, and to accumulate enough
money to contribute to the establishment of a new household. Women
usually contributed equally to this by adding a self-generated
'dowry'. This explained the prolonged court ships and delayed age of
marriage common up into the 1800s.
As noted above, the
family economy
was the fundamental unit of production
and consumption. People thought and worked in terms of sustaining the
economic life of the family, and its members saw themselves as
working together as interdependent rather than in an
individualistic or independent manner. The goal of the household was
to produce or earn through wages enough food and other necessities.
Almost everyone lived within a household of some kind because it was
almost impossible for ordinary people to support themselves
independently. Such people, living outside a household, other than
those in religious orders, were often suspected of living off
criminal activities, or potentially becoming dependent on others.
Within this type of subsistence economy all family
members needed to work. On a farm much of the effort went into
growing food and producing other agricultural products (flax, milk.
butter, etc.) that could be exchanged for food. However few people
had enough land to support the household from farming alone. In such
families some members might work for wages elsewhere and send wages
home. A father or older children might become migrant workers and
leave their farm's work to be done by the mother and younger
children. Surviving harvest failures (often every 3rd or 4th year) or
economic slumps dictated no one could be idle.
In Flanders rural family income was supported by
growing and processing flax into linen cloth. This cottage industry
was exploited at various levels by merchants and other middlemen. It
survived until the onset of the industrial revolution when spinning
machines and steam-driven mechanical looms destroyed the
profitability of the cottage industry. This and a succession of
harvest failures brought poverty, epidemic disease and actual
starvation to the region and was a major factor in encouraging
emigration to North America.
Women and the family
economy
Women and the family economy
A woman's life was in
large measure a function of her capacity to establish and maintain
a
household. For most women, except for those in religious orders,
marriage was an economic necessity and fulfilled sexual and
psychological needs. Her life was devoted first to supporting her
parents' household economy and then to assuring that she had her own
household in which to live. In most cases the bearing and raising
children were less important than the first two goals.
By the age of seven she already did housework, fed
the chickens, watered the animals and carried food and drink to those
working in the fields. Once a girl's parents and brother could cope
with the farm work her labor at home lost its value and she left
home, usually between the age of 12 and 14 years, usually to work on
another nearby farm. However, she would might migrate to a nearby own
or city to living in another household as a servant. Her chief aim
was to accumulate a dowry which allowed her to become and equal
economic partner in a new household when she married.
If her husband held enough farm land to support
them, the wife would spend much of her time carrying things to her
husband - water, food, seed, harvested grain and flax. To allow her
to continue her contributions soon after giving birth the newborn
infants often would be placed with a wet nurse. Sometimes it might
prove more profitable for her to work herself as a wet nurse in a
nearby town or city. But if her husband became a migrate worker she
would be in charge of the farm and undertake the plowing, planting
and harvesting herself with the aid of her children. If an economic
disaster such as the death of her husband struck a women might
maintain family income by taking outside work, send other family
members off to seek work or, as is well recorded, send them to beg in
the streets.
In the countryside, even though starvation might face the
family, children were rarely abandoned but in the cities a surprising
number of new born infants were brought anonymously to a
Foundling
Home.
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