Elizabethan England Topic Summaries

Family life

GCSE > History > Eduqas > GCSE History: Elizabethan England (1558-1603) > Elizabethan life and culture > Family life
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Key terms
  • Elizabethan families were patriarchal, with men holding legal authority over their households.
  • Wives were expected to manage households, bear children, and support their husbands domestically.
  • Infant mortality was high due to rampant contagious disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, and a lack of medical understanding particularly surrounding women and childbirth.
  • Parents were responsible for educating children, instilling discipline, and arranging marriages to advance social or economic status.
  • Extended kinship networks provided mutual support, especially among the gentry and middling classes.
  • Children contributed to family work from a young age, particularly among the poor.
  • Marriages were often arranged to consolidate wealth, land, or social alliances rather than for love.
  • Tudor marriage law was based on canon (Church) law, not modern civil law. Although the Church prohibited marriages between close blood relations, royal and noble families often obtained dispensation (authorisation) to marry cousins for political, financial, and dynastic reasons.

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