HIS243H1 Lecture : Life Cycles
Document Summary
Sept 23rd 2010: life cycles, birth, childhood, adolescence, women + marriage, maturity + old age. How people live becomes the main point of comparison for us. While we consider ourselves individuals, and the institutions of our life consider us individuals (school, government, banks, etc) this was not the case in early modern. You existed in networks, broad networks, such as blood family or patterned on blood family. High death rate, especially right after birth, aprox. 30-50% of children (depending on area) die before their first birthday, and another 30% of those who survive die before their fifth birthday. This would have a heavy psychological impact, everyone would be personally exposed to it, and therefore it becomes part of reality. They die from natural causes, things like gastro intestinal diseases, malnutrition, plagues (which tend to affect young people in particular). One of the highest places of infant mortality would be in these foundling homes, where care was erratic at best.
