10
years of age. The high mortality rate was primarily due to disease. Young children have weak immune systems, and the illnesses that send countless modern children to the emergency room in the middle of the night often ended fatally for their Elizabethan counterparts.3
It is sometimes supposed that because of the high mortality rate, parents were reluctant to invest emotion in their children, but evidence suggests that love was considered an essential component in the parent-child relationship. The sentiments expressed by Sir Henry Sidney in a letter to his son were not at all uncommon:
I love thee, boy, well. I have no more, but God bless you, my sweet child, in this world forever, as I in this world find myself happy in my children. From Ludlow Castle this 28th of October, 1578. [Addressed:] To my very loving son, Robert Sidney, give these. Your very loving father.4
Parents were expected to be strict, but this was seen as a sign of love.
Children who were not disciplined properly would not learn how to
interact with the rest of society: as one Elizabethan proverb has it, “Better unfed than untaught.” Undoubtedly there were cruel parents who abused 48
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
their power, but there is no evidence to indicate that abusiveness was any more common then than now, and child abuse could be prosecuted in the courts.
For the first six years or so, the Elizabethan child would be at home and principally under female care. Most children were cared for by their own mothers, although privileged children might be in the keeping of a nurse.
Young babies were kept in cradles fitted with rockers to help soothe the child to sleep; sometimes they slept in bed with their parents—this could be risky to the child, but it simplified midnight nursing and was probably especially beneficial on cold winter nights.
Old cloths were used as diapers. The baby’s head was kept warm with a cap called a biggin, and its body was wrapped in bands of linen called swaddling. Theorists believed that swaddling kept the limbs straight so that they would grow properly, but more importantly, it kept the baby warm and controlled its mobility: as the infant grew, unsupervised freedom could be extremely dangerous in a home with open fireplaces and countless other domestic dangers.
Babies were breast-fed and might be nursed in this way for about one or two years—Elizabeth herself had been weaned at 25 months. Aristocratic children often received their milk from a wet nurse, sparing the mother the trouble of nursing, and also raising the aristocratic birth-rate, since she would cease lactating and become fertile once more. The wet nurse was always a woman of lower social standing, and by definition one who had recently given birth herself, so that she was giving milk. With the high rate of infant mortality, there were many poor women able to earn a bit of extra money for a time by nursing someone else’s child.
As the child grew, it would be swaddled less restrictively to allow the arms to move, and eventually the swaddling would be dispensed with in favor of a long gown (allowing easy access to the diaper cloths). The child’s gown was typically fitted with long straps that dangled from the shoulders. The straps probably derived from the false sleeves sometimes found on adults’ gowns, but with children they allowed the garment to double as a harness. Boys and girls alike were dressed in gowns and petticoats akin to the garments of adult women; only after age 6 or so were boys breeched —put into the breeches worn by adult men.
For Elizabethan children, like children today, the early years were primarily a time for play and learning. During this time children would explore their world and begin to acquire some of the basic tools of social interaction.
Elizabethan English
The first of these tools was the child’s mother tongue. Elizabethan En glish was close enough to modern English that it would be comprehensible
years of age. The high mortality rate was primarily due to disease. Young children have weak immune systems, and the illnesses that send countless modern children to the emergency room in the middle of the night often ended fatally for their Elizabethan counterparts.3
It is sometimes supposed that because of the high mortality rate, parents were reluctant to invest emotion in their children, but evidence suggests that love was considered an essential component in the parent-child relationship. The sentiments expressed by Sir Henry Sidney in a letter to his son were not at all uncommon:
I love thee, boy, well. I have no more, but God bless you, my sweet child, in this world forever, as I in this world find myself happy in my children. From Ludlow Castle this 28th of October, 1578. [Addressed:] To my very loving son, Robert Sidney, give these. Your very loving father.4
Parents were expected to be strict, but this was seen as a sign of love.
Children who were not disciplined properly would not learn how to
interact with the rest of society: as one Elizabethan proverb has it, “Better unfed than untaught.” Undoubtedly there were cruel parents who abused 48
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
their power, but there is no evidence to indicate that abusiveness was any more common then than now, and child abuse could be prosecuted in the courts.
For the first six years or so, the Elizabethan child would be at home and principally under female care. Most children were cared for by their own mothers, although privileged children might be in the keeping of a nurse.
Young babies were kept in cradles fitted with rockers to help soothe the child to sleep; sometimes they slept in bed with their parents—this could be risky to the child, but it simplified midnight nursing and was probably especially beneficial on cold winter nights.
Old cloths were used as diapers. The baby’s head was kept warm with a cap called a biggin, and its body was wrapped in bands of linen called swaddling. Theorists believed that swaddling kept the limbs straight so that they would grow properly, but more importantly, it kept the baby warm and controlled its mobility: as the infant grew, unsupervised freedom could be extremely dangerous in a home with open fireplaces and countless other domestic dangers.
Babies were breast-fed and might be nursed in this way for about one or two years—Elizabeth herself had been weaned at 25 months. Aristocratic children often received their milk from a wet nurse, sparing the mother the trouble of nursing, and also raising the aristocratic birth-rate, since she would cease lactating and become fertile once more. The wet nurse was always a woman of lower social standing, and by definition one who had recently given birth herself, so that she was giving milk. With the high rate of infant mortality, there were many poor women able to earn a bit of extra money for a time by nursing someone else’s child.
As the child grew, it would be swaddled less restrictively to allow the arms to move, and eventually the swaddling would be dispensed with in favor of a long gown (allowing easy access to the diaper cloths). The child’s gown was typically fitted with long straps that dangled from the shoulders. The straps probably derived from the false sleeves sometimes found on adults’ gowns, but with children they allowed the garment to double as a harness. Boys and girls alike were dressed in gowns and petticoats akin to the garments of adult women; only after age 6 or so were boys breeched —put into the breeches worn by adult men.
For Elizabethan children, like children today, the early years were primarily a time for play and learning. During this time children would explore their world and begin to acquire some of the basic tools of social interaction.
Elizabethan English
The first of these tools was the child’s mother tongue. Elizabethan En glish was close enough to modern English that it would be comprehensible
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