page_title: Oikos
section_title: Children
hierarchical_section_title: Oikos / Family / Children
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Knabe beim Jo-Jo-Spiel. Innerseite eines attisches rotfiguriges Kylix, um 440 v. Chr. English: Boy playing yo-yo. Tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 440 BC. Français&#160;: Garçon jouant au yo-yo. Médaillon d'un kylix attique à figures rouges, v. 440 av. J.-C.
context_page_description: The ancient Greek word oikos refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house. Its meaning shifts even within texts, which can lead to confusion.
  The oikos was the basic unit of society in most Greek city-states. In normal Attic usage the oikos, in the context of families, referred to a line of descent from father to son from generation to generation. Alternatively, as Aristotle used it in his Politics, the term was sometimes used to refer to everybody living in a given house. Thus, the head of the oikos, along with his immediate family and his slaves, would all be encompassed.
  Large oikoi also had farms that were usually tended by the slaves, which were also the basic agricultural unit of the ancient economy.
context_section_description: Childbirth took place at home, with all the women of the household in attendance. A female midwife (maia, μαῖα) may have been present, and a male doctor called in if complications arose, but virtually no information on midwifery exists. Childbirth was regarded as polluting so was not allowed to take place on sacred ground. At birth the guardian (usually the father) had to decide whether to keep the child or expose it. If it was kept a purification ceremony took place on the fifth or seventh day after birth.
  It was the mother's duty to breast-feed her children, but wet nurses were employed, and pottery feeding bottles are also known. There is evidence from vase paintings for cradles of wickerwork or wood. From the 4th century BCE children appear much more in artistic representations. Children played a number of games, and evidence of toys comes from literature, vase paintings and surviving examples of the actual toys.
  It was customary at various festivals to give children toys. When girls were about to marry and when boys reached adolescence, it was customary for them to dedicate their playthings to deities.
  Male children were favored for many reasons. They perpetuated the family and family cult, cared for parents in old age and arranged a proper funeral for deceased parents. In addition sons could inherit their mothers' dowry. Boys were raised in the female quarters until about the age of six, when they were educated in schools, but girls remained under the close supervision of their mothers until they married. They rarely went out of the women's section of the house and were taught domestic skills at home, though they did attend some religious festivals. In Sparta boys were removed from their families at the age of seven to be reared by the state.
caption: A boy plays with a yo-yo in this image from an Attic red-figure kylix
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