The Family. Education equipped men and women for the social roles and responsibilities that they assumed in their families and communities. Expectations for their behavior and their contributions to family and community life varied according to age, gender, and class. As with most other facets of life during the medieval period, scholars know most about life in urban areas, and it would be wrong to assume that the social roles and responsibilities of rural people were necessarily the same as those of the urbanized population. The family, the most basic and important social unit, first and foremost shaped social life. Husbands and wives were bound by legal rules and social expectations that defined the husband as provider and the wife as obedient keeper of the household. The power and authority of the husband and father was largely unquestioned. In...