By Shannon Combs Bennett, Student

Onto Modules 3 and 4 in the new course Research: Social History. These were a very home and family centered set of topics: domestic life and then birth, life, and death. Things that we all have some sort of experience with. I was a little intrigued looking at the titles and the subheadings wondering what in the world we were going to learn about.

As the daughter of a doctor,  Module 4 was really right up my alley. Lots of information on health, disease, mortality, and so forth. To be honest, I called my mom a couple of times. She loved going through some of the information with me. Really, she may be retired but once in the health field, always in the health field.

Since I was fairly comfortable with the history and practices in Module 4 (as stated above) my personal interests and hobbies drew me to devour Module 3.  Yes, I am a stay-at-home mom. Yes, I can relate (somewhat) to my forbears who did a heck of a lot more than I do in a day but were still the primary care takers. If you think about it there is a lot of “things” that go into making a family and a home run.

The instructor touched not only on the common items you could expect (food, housing, land) but also on how the environment affected our ancestors as well as drugs and alcohol. If you think that drug and alcohol abuse are only a modern problem, think again. It affected our ancestors in different ways, especially when it may have been your doctor getting you addicted, but there were still implications on the home and family.

Fashion and clothing were also covered. Let’s face it, we humans if given a chance, will prance like peacocks. If your ancestors were poorer how do you think their fashion (or lack there off) would be seen?  What if they couldn’t clothe themselves?  These questions can lead you to think about the societal reactions of the classes on your ancestors.

I know, that got a bit heavy didn’t it?  Well, the next modules hopefully won’t be.  See you online!