In the natural law theories favored by the scholastic philosophers, the birth of children was the justification for marriage. A medieval child was brought into the world by the village midwife and baptized as quickly as possible, lest the terrible infant mortality of the day carry it into Limbo before its salvation was assured. So deep was this concern that the sacrament could be administered by a layman if no priest were available. Godparents, usually family friends, were designated to support the child if its parents should die. In southern Europe this role was sometimes given to a powerful friend or patron of the father. The baby was typically named for one of the godparents, a favored relative, or a patron saint. This practice, together with the limited number of names in contemporary use, sometimes resulted in more than one sibling having the same name. In everyday life, such children were differentiated by the appellations major or minor or by nicknames.

If possible, most women preferred to nurse their own babies. Infants were typically swaddled during the day. At night they sometimes slept with their mothers, though this practice was frowned upon because the mother might roll over in her sleep and smother the child. By the end of the first year children were permitted to crawl about on their own.

Medieval parents did not sentimentalize childhood as a world of innocence, but they loved their children and were emotionally affected by their loss. This would seem self-evident, but it has been the subject of a scholarly controversy. Parents also permitted their children to develop in stages that were not unlike those of today. Young children spent most of their time playing. As they grew older and stronger they took on responsibility for various tasks until, in their mid-to-late teens, they began to do the work of adults. For most children, this kind of informal apprenticeship was the only education that they would receive. Few villages had a school, and lords often claimed a fee from the parents for sending their children away. Fearing that workers would be lost to the manor, they also sought agreements that forbade children to enter the church.

The little that is known about child rearing practices comes from the end of the Middle Ages and seems to indicate that discipline was very harsh. This may not be applicable to earlier times. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were characterized by a deep fear of social disintegration and the perceived decline of parental authority. Criminals were punished more savagely than they had been before. Children, too, may have been increasingly victimized by the frustrations of society as a whole.

The available evidence seems to indicate that medieval attitudes toward children were not radically different from those of today. Noble families sent their sons to learn courtesy and the profession of arms in the household of a powerful friend or patron. Townsmen sent their children to be apprenticed, and those who could afford to do so offered them to the church at an early age. None of these practices implied indifference. They were in some ways analagous to sending a child to boarding school, and the normal expectation was that contact with the family would be maintained or, at least, resumed at some point in the future. . .

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