Life: Easy or Brutal?

When we talk about history we have a lot of questions, right? Well, I wonder how life was for people of the middle ages. First, I’m going to start with houses. Unless you were of noble family and lived in a big, beautiful castle you did not have a lovely house! Wow I wish my parents were kings and queens! People lived in small houses, often with one room. That one room was where you did everything. I could live in the same room as a sibling but not an animal! Yea that’s right your animals shared the rooms with you! I’m sure most of you are probably like “what’s so bad about sharing your room with a dog?” Well, bad enough for them, the dog was not a common pet. A goat or much bigger, smellier animal was! Now think about it! Don’t want to share the room now, do ya??

One thing that is so sad is life expectancy. So yea, we live till were 70, but you didn’t when you were in the middle ages! The average life expectancy was 35-40 years; um you didn’t have much time to live your life! And that low life expectancy wasn’t even during that plague. When the plague hit, the average life dropped to less than 20 years!! Women died of childbirth, men died of war, and children who made it passed 2 years old died of illness or disease. Awww! People didn’t get death; actually they didn’t take it very well! It was a big shocker to them that you don’t live forever! The death rates increased, and that caused the birth rates to increase. You’re normally married for years, maybe even decades , but in the middle ages, you might only be married 1 year because your wife died giving birth. Sad, right, well that’s just how life went.

Children were a lot like kids today, they were expected to help their parents, didn’t mean they always did! There weren’t many schools so what else are you going to do?? Girls were expected to be housekeeping and baby-sit siblings. Boys were told to learn the family trade in hopes to carry out the business. Kids didn’t have much time to be kids, they became adults right away. The oldest son inherited property and the youngest son got nothing. Daughters got clothes, money, or jewelry because women couldn’t inherit property.  Wow who would have guessed women don’t get the same rights as men??