![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm reading Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages as part of my research on the Italian book, and came across a statement that startled me. I was already familiar with the theory that childhood, as we currently know it, is a relatively recent invention; in a time with farms and cottage labor and estates to run, childhood was an apprenticehood stage where you trained for your adult work. (Never mind wanting to do something different when you grow up. Okay for the younger sons of upper classes, but deciding to run off and be an artist? Not so much.) But in this book I learn that until the eighteenth century European language had no word for a mother-father-kids grouping. There were families structured like that, but no word for it. Family meant something else entirely.
Under Roman law you might belong to a clan or bloodline, but the family was comprised of everyone who lived in a household. At a time when life was short, brutish, and unpredictable, most households had not only Mom and Dad and the Kids, but the odd aunt, uncle, greats and grands and cousins, widowed and orphaned. And the head of the family was the paterfamilias--the ruler of the house, though not necessarily the father or grandfather. Even after the advent of Christianity, a new child was brought to the paterfamilias, who would either pick it up and give it a name, or reject it (in which case it was exposed--put out somewhere where it would either die or be picked up by someone else. The "family" also included the servants and slaves, who lived under different rules but were still part of the household. If a servant today (or a hundred years ago) said "they treated me just like family" that meant something entirely different; in Rome a servant was family.
Next time I see an Olive Garden commercial where they announce that when you're there they treat you like family, I'm gonna wonder which kind of family we're talking about.
God, I love research.
Under Roman law you might belong to a clan or bloodline, but the family was comprised of everyone who lived in a household. At a time when life was short, brutish, and unpredictable, most households had not only Mom and Dad and the Kids, but the odd aunt, uncle, greats and grands and cousins, widowed and orphaned. And the head of the family was the paterfamilias--the ruler of the house, though not necessarily the father or grandfather. Even after the advent of Christianity, a new child was brought to the paterfamilias, who would either pick it up and give it a name, or reject it (in which case it was exposed--put out somewhere where it would either die or be picked up by someone else. The "family" also included the servants and slaves, who lived under different rules but were still part of the household. If a servant today (or a hundred years ago) said "they treated me just like family" that meant something entirely different; in Rome a servant was family.
Next time I see an Olive Garden commercial where they announce that when you're there they treat you like family, I'm gonna wonder which kind of family we're talking about.
God, I love research.