Men and Women

Abstract

All people in Puritan New England—single sons, hired hands, household servants, apprentices, aged widows, the indigent being supported by the town, the physically or mentally challenged—all people lived in families. A congregational people believed in congregational living. Individuals did not get together to set up quarters for two or three bachelors or unmarried maidens. They attached themselves—or were attached by local authorities—to the most appropriate family. Family members arranged for a rational division of labor, supported each other emotionally and materially, and watched each other’s moral and social behavior. Families not only ate together, they prayed together. In the first generation of settlement, they also usually slept together in one room—often two to a bed. Thus, even a husband’s and wife’s most intimate moments of sexual intercourse took place in a family setting. Privacy from fellow family members was a scarce commodity. Nor was the family itself a private institution. Magistrates treated it as a unit of local government. Ministers regarded it as the nursery of salvation. The family bore a heavy burden in Puritan society.