Poverty in Feudalistic Europe and how it affected Child Welfare

               Poverty is an enormous social issue today that’s growing at an alarming rate, and was even a huge problem formerly in the 11^th century. I believe personally that we are not doing everything that we can to prevent and help the people in poverty and people who don’t have enough to afford proper nutrition. It would cost roughly $175 billion dollars to end world poverty (Harack, 2011) and considering that there are roughly 271.6 million Americans not living in poverty and Americans spent about $646 on Christmas gifts in 2011 (American Research Group, 2011), there would be over $175 billion and we would be able to end world poverty alone with just America’s holiday shopping money. But why don’t we? I believe it’s because poverty is out of sight, out of mind, and we believe that the problem will fix itself eventually. We also like to spoil ourselves, and in general, wouldn’t give up $646 to charity out of selfishness. However, poverty in feudalistic Europe is seen much differently than today in terms of the kind of poverty, as the type of work and pay was significantly diverse.

                Women living in 12^th century Europe were not always able to take care of their children, and as a consequence, these children were living in poverty and welfare for the rest of their lives. Instead of infanticide, the church accepted the anonymity of abandonment of their children in which they would be raised by nurses until the age of four, when they would move to a hospice where they could earn a living at age seven (Fuchs, 1984). These children would grow up to become nurses as well, or move out of the hospice to pursue jobs offered by nobles as a serf.

                For those children that were not abandoned and lived with their parents, it was often in poor living conditions with very little to sustain themselves. Many of these populaces were working with their numerous children trying to make ends meet to be able to pay the landlord’s rent, but harvest failures and bad weather could be a deciding factor on whether the children continued to live in welfare (Hatcher, 1994). As the Black Death made its way into Europe in 1350, the amount of poverty in Europe did not decline, but the amount of serfs available to work the field did. This lead to peasant revolts, kings taking back their land, and the establishment of a centralized government.

As the decline of feudalism took its course, it was interconnected to other social issues that arose among the Europeans. Poverty, crime, illness, and social disorder were products of the switch from feudalism to industrialism near the 17^th century (Penna, 2005). The social welfare of children was directly affected by this switch, as this brought about the English Poor Laws and the employment of children for cheap labour, which will be discussed in future blog posts.

References:

American Research Group, Inc. (2011). 2011 Christmas Gift Spending Plans Flat. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from the American Research Group Inc.’s website: http://americanresearchgroup.com/holiday/

Fuchs, R. (1984). Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press.

Harack, B. (2011). How much would it cost to end extreme poverty in the world? Retrieved October 16, 2012, from the Vision of Earth website: http://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/

Hatcher, J. (1994). England in the Aftermath of the Black Death. Past and Present, 144, 3-35.

Penna, S. (2011). The Children Act 2004: Child Protection and Social Surveillance. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 27(2), 143-157.

 By: Spencer Edgar