[Glorantha] Re: Matriarchy

In message <20060706114807.75269.qmail@web51002.mail.yahoo.com> Simon Phipp writes:

> Medieval societies tended to do away with any notion of passing
>property from mother to daughter and seemed to enforce father-son
>heirs. More traditional societies could have kept other ways, so I
>don't doubt that Finnish women could have inherited property and
>been more powerful partners in marriage.

This seems to have be a result of the influence of Roman law and Christianity. Places like Scandinavia which were never part of the Roman Empire and adopted Christianity late are most likely to have avoided excluding women from inheritance.

> Children were often looked after by their relatives rather than
>their mothers, not just in the English upper classes. Many women
>used wetnurses to feed their babies, either by choice or necessity.
>Not everyone had nannies, but a lot of people had nurses in medieval
>times.

A lot of the upper classes did but they aren't typical of the population. I expect where a peasant woman was unable to breastfeed a sister would often be able to help out but if not the baby would die. Even at the beginning of the 20th Century a common cause of infant death was "Failure to thrive".    

>> I'm all for using a different models for families in different
>> parts of Glorantha and different male and female roles. The
>> biggest constraint on that isn't nurture however, it's the
>> physical activities of pregnancy and breast feeding. These are
>> incompatable with much of the heavy work of farming. So however
>> Esrolia is structured the men will be doing most of the outdoor
>> work.
>
> Possibly, but after the child is born, wetnurses can be used.

Just how many peasants are going to be able to afford a wetnurse? Wetnurses appear a lot in fiction because the characters are able to afford them. Remember in all pre-modern societies that most women spend a large part of their young adult life in a cycle of bearing and breastfeeding babies.

>Women used to work the fields while pregnant in the real world, so
>why not in Esrolia? After a while, the children can help in the
>fields as well. So, I don't really think that men working the
>fields and women staying at home is particularly relevant.

Certainly there is some field work which can be done by women and no doubt more will be done in Esrolia by women than elsewhere. However there is much work, particularly without modern tools, which relies on a lot of weight and upper body strength.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/