In the old days, the education of boys and girls in Russia was very different. And if the first parents were raised as earners, then the second - as future mothers and housewives. And if they said about the 12-year-old girl that she was "not straight", but about the boy, that he "can only drive grandmothers" - this was a great shame for the child and his parents.
Preparation for the main role of women began very early, and the growing up of girls was accompanied by a lot of traditional rituals. Including important was the preparation of dowry, in which the girl from early childhood participated herself. She weaved, sewed, embroidered, spun, knitted and made.
Folk traditions and ceremonies were fully reflected in the appearance of the girls, who, from the very beginning, hair braided into one braid, symbolizing the unity of the three vital forces. At the same time, she was weaved so that she strictly lay down along the spine. This was due to the belief that the light forces from the hair passed into him and filled with energy. After the marriage, the braid was divided into two. And this was a symbol of the fact that the forces will need doubly - the girl herself and her child.
The ancient "Domostroy" - the charter by which the peasants lived was an unwritten law. He demanded from the father of a strict family in the upbringing of his children. In particular, it concerned daughters, since it was considered a matter of great pride for parents to give a daughter a marriage that was immaculate, and, moreover, accustomed to different kinds of work.
Daughters were much earlier started to accustom to feasible work, rather than sons. Apparently from here and it went, that girls grew up faster.
"A small matter is better than a great idleness," according to this principle, the mother brought up her daughter, and she began to learn any agricultural or needlework work from a personal example. Showing and explaining the subtlety to the daughter and the sequence of doing this or that, she gradually involved her in the process.
So, if at five or six years of age a small hostess looked after the ducklings or chickens, then by the age of ten or twelve she had driven the cows out to the pasture and could milk them. Early inoculated labor skills enabled the woman to stand up to the hardships of peasant everyday life. And it is not for nothing that the proverb was popular among the people for centuries: "With the craft you will pass the whole world - you will not be lost."
Thus, a small daughter of five or six years in accordance with the peasant code had to learn the basics of spinning, help the mother to run around the house: wash dishes, clean up, prepare simple meals, and sweep the floor, wash and clean benches, shake and rinse the mats, clean the bed , shake it, change the beams, candles, clean the kerosene lamps; to look after poultry and cattle. And under her supervision could leave the younger brothers and sisters.
At the age of 10, to the girl who had passed the original "science" of her mother, grandmother, the demands became tougher, and she became an adult in charge of the work that she was entrusted with. She had to collect firewood and bring water from the well, clean and stove the oven, cook porridge and cook borschtes, cook pies and other pastries.
Often, the ten-year-old girls themselves had to wash and rinse the laundry on the river, and then hang it to dry. And if in the summer it was almost like entertainment, then washing in the ice hole in the winter turned into a rather severe test.
And in large families, the youngest children looked after the older sister, who could already independently transplant and feed from the horn, lull and entertain with songs, "pistols" and jokes.
Often, a girl of 10-11 years old parents could give in nannies, "pestuni", to look after other people's children. With "pestune" they paid with either products, or cuts of cloth, or even money. So, for a season the girl could earn from three to five rubles.
It is very important for the girl in adolescence to learn the elements of weaving, since all the fabrics for clothes, towels, tablecloths the peasants made themselves. Therefore, the cloth was called homespun.
In the beginning, the girl was taught "to reel the threads with nets (birch bark tubules-coils), then - flap flax, and spin the tows (threads) out of it." In some regions, hair was scratched and spun. As a rule, weaving engaged in large "baby" companies in the winter.
And if at the age of five or seven, the baby was mastering the primary skills of spinning yarn on a spindle or spinning wheel, which her father made for her in a reduced version, then by the age of 10 she could already independently weave a belt or a towel on her weaving mill. Since that time, she began to prepare for herself a dowry.
A lot of responsibilities for a small hostess and in not at home. She had to knit sheaves, gather spikelets, stir up hay; planting seedlings, weeding weeds and watering the garden; graze the cow, goat, geese, ducks; remove manure and clean the cattle.
However, proceeding from the above, one should not think that the village children in Russia were deprived of ordinary children's joys. At leisure, the younger girls played in the "daughter-mother" dolls-motankami, which themselves sewed outfits and invented jewelry. A girl a little older were going to a get-together, where they frolicked, sang, knit, embroidered and sewed. And children of all ages were sent to the forest to collect berries, mushrooms, herbs, brushwood. These entertainments also adapted them to adulthood.
All her childhood and adolescence the girl was under the patronage of her father, who, after giving her in marriage, transferred these duties to her husband. In Russia they used to say: "The father takes care of the daughter before the crown, and the husband to the end." And becoming a wife, she was obliged to honor her husband as the head of the family. And what she was taught by her father and mother, she passed on to her children, grandchildren. And mastered labor skills from childhood were the main guarantee of her survival in adult life.