Motherhood

Renaissance Europeans did not generally idealize motherhood or give special praise to the role of mothers. The one exception, the widespread love and respect for the Virgin Mary as mother of Christ, did not carry over to mothers in everyday life. Fathers acted as heads of the family, supervising children's upbringing and making decisions about their futures. Death or desertion took fathers from many households, however, leaving women alone with children to raise.

Pregnancy. Society expected married women to be mothers. Most women became pregnant within a year of marriage, and a large number of brides were pregnant when they married. A steady stream of pregnancies usually followed, spaced two or three years apart, for the rest of the woman's childbearing years. Most women breast-fed their babies for at least a year or two. Breast-feeding reduced their chances of becoming pregnant during this period, as did social customs that discouraged sexual activity for nursing mothers. Women of the upper classes, however, often did not breast-feed their infants themselves but instead turned them over to wet nurses—usually peasant women whose own infants had died. For this reason, wealthy wives might have babies as often as once a year.

Infertility, a woman's failure to become pregnant, was a source of distress to married couples. Doctors assumed that the source of this problem lay with the woman, labeling childless married women as "barren." Some barren women sought help by praying to the Virgin Mary. Folklore also offered methods for improving fertility, such as eating crabs or wearing amulets*.

Most people did not try to avoid pregnancy through planning or the use of birth control. Prostitutes and courtesans* were believed to have secret methods for preventing unwanted pregnancies, but respectable society frowned on the idea. Abortion also had shady associations, yet it may have been fairly common. There was little concern about ending a pregnancy in its very early stages, before the mother had "felt life" (movement within the womb).

Birth. Renaissance women gave birth in the company of many other women. Female relatives and neighbors gathered at a birth to offer help, comfort, and social contact. Men, even doctors, had no place at the scene of a birth. The most important attendant was a midwife, an older woman who had borne children and received training in the skills needed to assist at childbirth. However, if serious complications threatened the life of the mother or the child, a male surgeon might be called.

Childbirth posed medical risks for both mothers and infants. The main cause of death for mothers was probably infection, usually caused by a hand or instrument inserted into the birth canal. Newborns also faced many dangers. Between 20 and 40 percent of all babies died during their first year. Half of those who reached their first birthday died before the age of 10. People at all levels of society, aware of the high rate of infant and childhood deaths, wanted their babies baptized as soon as possible, to protect their souls in case of premature death.

Bringing Up Children. Little information is available about the relationships between mothers and their young children in the Renaissance. In general, poor mothers had more and closer contact with their children than wealthy women, whose children often spent their first years under the care of wet nurses in the nurses' own homes.

Wet-nursing aroused mixed feelings. Both medicine and religion strongly urged women to nurse their own babies, and images of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus became very common in Renaissance art. In addition, many people believed that children absorbed character traits along with breast milk, which led to fears that upper-class children might acquire undesirable qualities from the peasant women who nursed them. Despite these concerns, however, many parents who could afford to employ wet nurses did so, either so that they could remain sexually active or for other reasons. Wet-nursing was a thriving and highly organized business throughout Europe.

Mothers tended to keep small children out of trouble by restricting their movement. They usually kept infants wrapped in "swaddling clothes," which kept them warm and prevented them from moving around. Most babies stayed in cradles near the fire, with a mother, a servant, or an older child keeping an eye on them while going about other tasks. Even once they came out of swaddling clothes, babies were not allowed to crawl or walk around freely. Children in poor households, who were less strictly controlled, sometimes seriously injured themselves.

Mothers in Society. Mothers affected their children's lives through their family connections. Children, whether they lived in the village society of peasants or in the great world of nobles, benefited from whatever wealth and status their mother's family possessed. Maternal grandparents and other relatives could also make up an important part of a child's emotional life.

Mothers played a role in the inheritance of money and property, usually by passing property from their husbands to their children. The law viewed mothers not as the owners of property but as temporary caretakers, safeguarding it for their children. When a man died, his children commonly inherited his possessions, with a certain amount set aside for their widowed mother to use during her lifetime. Some men, however, made their wives their heirs, especially if their children were quite young.

Conflicts sometimes arose when a widow with children remarried, especially if she had children by her second marriage. Children of the "first bed" and the "second bed" frequently battled over their mother's property in court. In 1560 the French crown protected children of first marriages by setting limits on the amount a widowed mother could carry into a new marriage.