ABSTRACT
In the family history approach, the focus is naturally on the household, while the institutional context in which peasant customs took shape is of secondary importance. Similarly, the law has often received limited attention when discussing the subject of peasant children leaving home for service. Children's workload may have been beyond their parents' control in countries with feudal dues, corvee labour or serfdom. Russian peasants who were indebted to their landlords repaid them with labour. Sometimes such debt-servitude contracts were entered into by the peasant parents together with their children. The Swedish hired labour acts stipulated that propertyless males and females were obliged to go into service, on pain of being treated as masterless persons, but there was no peasant practice of sending daughters into service 'to pay parents' feudal dues', contrary to what has been claimed.
