HIST 3501 Lecture 24: North-West European Households
Document Summary
The basic social building block in the em period were households. The average house size would be approximately five people. It was not as big as we might think, which meant that it was a simple household instead of a joint household. People would start their own homes when they got married instead of living with their parents; it was not the norm to live with one s elders, and thus there were few joint households. Women were married at around 24-26, and men at 26-28. They were married later because they needed money to start their own household, as well as to develop the skills to make money to maintain the household. The basic form of the economy was based upon the household. Trade came in more and more, but was mostly focused locally. Communities were thus self-sufficient, and everybody in the community would have their own trade in order to help the community.
