We're children really taken away at age 7 in ancient times

[LylaLee]

Yes, I know people talk all sorts of bollocks online, but in a thread one poster said, in England, in ancient times, to avoid inbreeding, children would be taken away from their villages at age 7 and taken to another village.

As well as sounding totally made up, it is likely to lead to MORE inbreeding?

Has anyone ever heard of this?

It never ceases to amaze me just how much cobblers there is on the internet.

To PPs, I agree and acknowledge that there were established practices of fostering children in historical times.

But to suggest that EVERYONE after age 7 had their child sent elsewhere, and they raised a swapped child instead is clearly bollocks.

I think the way the upper classes behave becomes the "norm". Like people from the distant future thinking going to Eton was how children were brought up. Also- "women didn't work outside the home." Working class women always did.

Many cultures have practised exogamy (you can only get married to someone outside of your tribe or clan). This is unlikely to have widely involved seven-year-olds.

In by Medieval - Tudor times noble families sent children to other courts as young as 12 or as old as 15.

Depends where and when you mean. Medieval England had a lot of children with a wet nurse, sometimes sent away. Victoria England sent a lot of 7 year olds to boarding school. Even in about 1920 my 4 year old uncle was sent to a boarding school for a bit with his 12 year old cousin! If you read books about the childhoods of people like Mary Queen of Scots and others they were often kept in different places - sometimes it was to keep them safe or away from disease or for other reasons. However most peasant children (ie most children) in the UK will have always been with their families.

I had one direct ancestor who died at sea and 2 sons quickly were sent to sea aged about 12 and some of the girls into service at about 13 years as the family had no income - this was 1800s. In other words childhood could be over fairly early but usually not at 7.

Yes, completely on board with this sort of explanation.

What knocked me for six was the idea of some sort of hunger games style round up of every boy and girl age 7, then them being taken away 'to prevent inbreeding',

You’re the only one who is claiming this, though. Based on ‘something someone said on the internet’…? You’re completely misunderstanding it.

Read this for an overview of fosterage in medieval Ireland.
https://www.historyireland.com/fosterage-child-rearing-in-medieval-ireland/

My grandmother went into service aged 13. She was born in 1879.

Have just returned from holiday in East African country. Our guide was telling us about the education system. For secondary school, the children all have to be sent to a different region of the country to "socialise". Is this something similar?

It's something someone said in another thread here, talking about inbreeding.

They were very detailed, saying that the entire village in England and Europe sent away every 7 yo child 'to prevent inbreeding'. I queried it in the thread, but it was a busy thread and got no response.

Everyone has gaps in their knowledge. So I was now wondering if I had missed this massive piece of knowledge, somehow.

Maybe the poster misunderstood - or was over-stating - practices such as fosterage, or upper-class people sending sons to train as squires and daughters to be raised in other upper-class households? Or maybe the poster was just nuts misinformed. Hard to know without reading the original thread.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this wasn't something practised in respect of every 7yo in ancient (or medieval) Europe - or anywhere else, for that matter.

The poster also appeared to be talking about the practices of the ancient Britons before the Romans which was hundreds of years before most of the systems we've talked about here.

I know that archaeologists have been doing DNA studies of the contents of chambered tombs and the like which have suggested complicated family dynamics (before the Iron Age I think) but I am not sure there's much else to go on in terms of evidence at the moment.

We don't really know a hell of a lot about family life amongst the iron age peoples, the beaker people, the grooved ware people etc etc but DNA is the gift that keeps giving so far.