Measuring Adulthood: Adolescence and Gender in Renaissance Venice

The perscriptive threshold of adulthood among late-medieval Venetian patricians appears very different for men and for women, centering on social (i.e., public) puberty as the gauge of male adulthood, physiological (i.e., childbearing) puberty that of female. Yet in practice men did not inevitably a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of family history Vol. 17; no. 4; pp. 371 - 395
Main Author Chojnacki, Stanley
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.1992
National Council on Family Relations
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Adolescence
Adults
Anatomy & physiology
Child development
Gender
Italy
Middle Ages
Social life & customs
Teenagers
Venice Italy
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Summary:The perscriptive threshold of adulthood among late-medieval Venetian patricians appears very different for men and for women, centering on social (i.e., public) puberty as the gauge of male adulthood, physiological (i.e., childbearing) puberty that of female. Yet in practice men did not inevitably achieve the normative patriarchal outcome of a graduated, formalized adolescence; nor did adolescence end for all women with teenaged marriage and motherhood. Non-patriarchal male adulthoods and the graduated phases of the uxorial cycle for women modify the impression of sharp gender contrast that results from viewing age at marriage as the pivot of adulthood. Graduated adulthood in both sexes gave men and women alike the possibility of varied adult identities, responding to a range of choice and circumstance.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0363-1990
1552-5473
DOI:10.1177/036319909201700403