Early America

7 Pages 1795 Words

The era that was seventeenth century colonial America was very different from today’s times. The society that existed at that time had very different views on life and how it should occur. The daily routines were very unlike ours even tough it may be hard to believe. Even families, which seem to be a non-changing faction in history, were also distinct in size and order. (Thomas XIII) John Demos commented that “the colonial family was ‘extended’ rather than nuclear. False.” John Demos, who in a study of Bristol , Rhode Island, came up with conclusions about family life in early America that contradicted ideas previously accepted by historians.(Hawke 58). An extended family includes the core group of males which are a grandfather, adult sons and sons’ sons, their wives, and their unmarried daughters. (Brooks 27) Demos’s idea is basically this one. The house in the colonial times shaped the home. What he means by this is that you could not have an extended family that included servants, apprentices, and other non-kinfolk in a house that measured twenty feet by twenty feet and rose only a story and a half. Even if you added another room, you would only have enough livable space for a nuclear family which consisted of parents and children. This was due to the high number of children in a family. The average number was about seven to ten. Some far exceeded that, others barely managed having two or three. (Hawke, 58-59). In the early colonial families, every member had a different “job.” The head of the family was mostly the father. He presided over family prayers and worked on the family farm. Mothers usually raised the children, acted as midwives to other women in town, and tended to household chores. (Walker 86). Up until about the age eight, boys and girls wore the same thing. They only wore wool or linen dresses. After a boy reached the age of eight or nine, he would begin to help out with the father’s job, which was f...