Not much to your surprise, life as a child in the Elizabethan Era is much different than childhood today. For starters, children in the Elizabethan Era did not have phones to play games, not everyone was allowed to go to school, and we have access to almost anything we want. But just like today, some children had it easier than others. Today in my presentation, I am going to compare the children of the wealthy to the children of the poor during the Elizabethan Era, including examples from Romeo and Juliet.
Children of the Poor: Children of the poor had it tougher than the children of the wealthy. First off, children of the poor did not attend school because they were a lower social status, they did not have access to healthy food that will not get them sick, and they did not have toys to play with other than the ones they made out of paper. Queen Elizabeth I tried to help the poor by creating the poor law. One of her goals of the poor law was to turn poor children into craftsmen that didn’t have a family and lived in orphanages.
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Even though the chances of surviving as a baby and as a toddler was approximately the same between the children of both wealthy and poor based on the fact that 50/100 children would make it to age five, living longer was in favour towards the wealthy. The life expectancy of the wealthy in Elizabethan England was 30-35 years, compared to the poor which was 20-25 years. Boys were able to attend school and learn literature and the arts, while girls got to stay home where their mothers would teach them how to cook. Wealthy children also had access to better food and toys to play