Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Pen & Sword History, and author Stephanie Kline for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

The Tudor Period is the name for the 16th century in England, coinciding with the rule of monarchs in the Tudor line from 1485 to 1603. This was a remarkable time of change in many ways. Not only did the Reformation take place, thereby enabling King Henry VIII to break off from the Roman Catholic church, but there were advances in technology as well as the discovery of another large land area to the east of Europe. Numerous movies have depicted this era, but the details often get lost.

Stephanie Kline extensively researched what family life was like during those years and presents it to readers in Raising the Tudors: Motherhood in the Sixteenth Century. The book does not strictly stick to what it was like for the mother of a family, but it really gives great insight into what family life was like in general during this time.

The beginning of the book details the background that Kline thought readers should know to approach her book. In particular, the prominent medical theories are explored. Of course, most of the common theories at the time were wrong, but it’s interesting to know this in approaching how women were cared for during this time. Sure, there were also midwives who probably knew more about a woman’s body than most educated physicians of the day, but this was a time when men were thought to have a better learning capacity than women. It was a time that was beginning to get away from the idea of a local healer with information passed down through history to work with and turn to men educated at the universities of the day for health care.

Kline covers just about every topic affecting a woman from birth to death. Women were considered property; first of their father and later of their husband. They faced an uphill battle if they wanted to assert their own thoughts on life and marriage. Although arranged marriages were common among royalty and nobility, a woman usually had to have her father’s permission to get married. Her primary job was then to produce and raise children. Once she was past childbearing age, there wasn’t much left for her to do in life, as society saw it.

The details Kline gives are excellent. The nobility and royalty are covered extensively, as there are more records of their lives than of anyone else’s. Not everyone was literate at the time, and the lower classes didn’t have the time or finances to keep diaries or write many letters to each other. Kline does manage to dig up at least a general idea of what life was like among the middle and lower classes.

One particular thing I never knew was how, at around 10-14, children would be sent to live with another family, ostensibly to learn a trade. For girls, it usually meant going into service. For boys, it could have been any of a variety of trades or learning to farm. I look at my 11-year-old granddaughter and can’t imagine sending her away to learn how to be a ladies’ maid!

I found Raising the Tudors: Motherhood in the Sixteenth Century a fairly easy book to read. The hardest parts were the quotes Kline included directly from that time period. The English language at the time was quite different, and it took a lot of concentration to interpret what the writer was saying. There are extensive footnotes in the book, and several pictures of the paintings of the era that she discusses during the course of the book. It’s an excellent look at an era that we have seen portrayed in the cinema for quite some time that gives the reader more knowledge of what life was really like then.