Medieval households

 We tend to think of the "household" as the stereotypical Mom-Dad-kids, with the assumption that Mom and Dad as married and the kids as all theirs.  But in fact the US census shows that this describes only a small minority of households.  Medieval households were the same.

In fact the medieval Latin term "familia" meant not family but household.  "Family" was described by terms such as "gens," 'stirps," or "consanguinei."  Medieval people were extremely aware of their family connections, but for most purposes the household was the more important unit.

Think about modern households.  There might be just one person in the house.  There might be a couple (married or unmarried) without children, or some non-romantic roommates, or some adults with children who might not all be both of theirs.  Children might live with a single parent.  Siblings might live together as adults.  There might be a grandparent or aunt or uncle attached to a household  There might be a boarder.  On a farm, the hired hands might live in the same house and eat with the farmer.  For more well-to-do families, there might be a live-in nanny, a cook or housekeeper, even a butler.  Medieval households could have versions of any of these.

Medieval peasant households routinely included a collection of relatives who did not match the simple Mom-Dad-kids model.  In a medieval town, a well to do merchant or artisan family would have a servant or two and probably also have young apprentices living with them.  A castle would have a whole array of people living there, the castellan lord and (usually) his lady, perhaps their children, perhaps some other relatives, unrelated knights, servants, craftsmen, young men in training, maybe a priest or two.  This medieval castle would be occupied disproportionately by men.

And of course medieval people lived in a very "face to face" world, unlike us, who chat with our friends and family largely through social media or phone calls.  In a peasant village, you'd know the people next door almost as well as you knew the people who slept under your roof.  For one thing, you'd see them every time they trotted out to the dung pile, as well as other times.  In a castle or monastery, a lot of people slept in the same room, so there wasn't much of what we'd consider privacy.  Still, the household was the basic economic and social unit, as it really still is for us.

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

For more on medieval families and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.