In these early societies there was nothing like "birth control", and in spite of pronouncements by religious and political leaders, illegitimacy was common. 

Large numbers of babies, if they (and their mothers) survived childbirth, died in their first year.  As in most other early "civilized" societies, many unwanted infants were simply left exposed to die in the outside.

Children in general were generally left to fend for themselves at very early ages, and if the parents could manage to raise the child until he was six or seven years of age, he might be sent forth to "seek his fortune", while the fortunate ones might be apprenticed or indentured to serve the house of a nobleman or wealthy merchant.

Even those who got to sweep chimneys at least had a calling and a trade.  Those who were apprenticed or indentured might serve for sixteen or eighteen years (or longer) without ever earning a penny, but at least they were housed and fed, if only minimally.

This is the reality behind the serene and pastoral scene that is spoken of so glowingly by so-called social reformers who bemoan the "inhumanity" of industrialization.

It is not a pretty picture, but it is the reality that unfolds when you come close enough to critically look for the details.

Life of this sort is so foreign to most of us today living in the industrialized world, that we can hardly conceive of it. 

Yet we have stories from chroniclers of the era that describe little children eating dirt to fill their bellies - and accounts of the elderly cropping grass on their hands and knees in competition with the grazing sheep. 

 These are the conditions that confronted the common people of pre-industrial England, barely three hundred years ago - and even to this day in the non-industrialized areas that are referred to the "third world".

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