Family Roles: The Anglo-Saxon Family Structure Today

The Anglo-Saxon family structure is very different from a typical family structure we see today. However, throughout my research I believe you will see that they are not so much different from our family structure today. Anglo-Saxon family structure was extremely important to their everyday life because of the roles of the men, children, and women.

Men play an important role in the Anglo-Saxon family structure. In this time, the only purpose a man had was to protect and provide for their family (“Roles”). The men did this by joining in their military. In the military, the men battled with other civilizations and only after this battle were they able to come home to their family (Levick). The men also had the job of building homes for their loved ones. The last responsibility of the men was to grow food for family to eat each day (Levick). As a whole, Anglo-Saxon men represented strength and wisdom for all of the townspeople to see (“Roles”).

The role of Anglo-Saxon children is important to the family structure as well.

When a mother was ready to give birth to her child, she was supposed to seclude herself from most of society and surround herself with other women. We also know that Anglo-Saxon birth was followed by baptism (Orme). Once children were old enough to know gender roles, they followed that parent in their daily tasks. After the children hit puberty at around age thirteen, they began to do serious work whether it were domestic or agricultural duties. Not much is known about how adults treated their children, however their burials show that children were buried with their belongings like adults were. We can also discover that children with deformities were well cared for (Orme). In conclusion, children had strict duties but were still well cared for and

loved.
Women were the glue in the Anglo-Saxon family structure. The women were seen as the peace-weavers, motivators, cupbearers, and memory keepers. As a peace weaver, a woman would marry a member of another clan in order to unite the two clans’ together (Stelmach). As a motivator, women would praise the men in all of their successes whether it is in battle or at home (“Roles”). As a cupbearer, women would serve drinks to the men after they had a battle, only women could serve alcohol in that time (Stelmach). When a woman had to act as a memory keeper, it may have been the most challenging role of all, for they had the job of remembering their lost loved ones (“Roles”). A woman's role was not always an easy one and they sure had a lot of them.

In final analysis, the Anglo-Saxon family structure is different from what we see today; however as I have pointed out, there are still many similarities in the way that they cared for each other as well as similarities in the way that they treated their children. For example, the everyday roles of men, children, and women are what really made the Anglo-Saxon people thrive.