As described in a previous post, in the early Middle Ages, children could be dedicated to the church around the same age that their peers entered school or began professional training. They were not forced to take vows when they got old enough. Monks and nuns were very aware that one of the vows was of “stability,” essentially a promise never to leave the walls of the community unless sent by the Abbot. It was not an easy vow to keep, and they had all known of novices who climbed over the wall and ran away. Much better never to vow.
So the children who grew up in monasteries were permitted to leave, if they chose. But as you might by now notice, they had a problem: they had missed out on years of alternative training. It might not be as much of an issue if they had been trained in a useful profession at the convent or monastery. Monasteries varied a lot in how they were run; the holiest ones were mostly choir monks who sang and prayed. But others (perhaps the majority) were run as businesses. Generations of rich people had left farms, manors, and even mines to monasteries in their wills. Lay brothers had to run these businesses to generate income that supported the choir monks. So perhaps some of the children raised in monasteries had learned a trade, but it isn’t likely. They had certainly been taught to read, so might make a decent shift as teachers. In any event, most of the children who grew up in monasteries took vows.
At the same time, there were always young men or women entering the monastic life for the first time at early adulthood. Some were girls fleeing disgusting arranged marriages in the only permissible way. Some were knights who had sickened with killing or had other crimes on their consciences. Others had tried their hand at the world in some way, but life had gone wrong: widows, failed workers, those disappointed in love.
It’s not hard to believe that oblates, as well as older novices, freely chose their lot. If they joined as lay brothers or sisters, their daily lives were not so different from other people’s. They had security that others lacked; belonging to a monastery meant health care and legal protection. While medieval people were as interested in sex as the next era, they had to observe that family life was often tragic and discouraging. Living as a single person in a monastic community, they need never experience childbirth or the death of children. They would not have to choose which mouth to feed in a famine. They could live in an envelope of meaning, certain that their daily work was somehow redeeming the world in God’s eyes. Not a bad deal, given that the fleas were inescapable.