Households almost always consisted of a married couple, their children (until early teenage years) and servants. Except for the few wealthy households, homes did not contain more then five or six members. Family members of different generations did not live under the same roof. High mortality and late marriage prevented a formation of families of three generations or more.

The practice of young men and women leaving their homes to marry and form independent households.

These so called servants were much more like actual family members then those who were hired to preform labor for the households. They usually were young people hired by a family to of course do small errands and jobs for the family, though they lived, ate, and interacted with the members, and were in no way associated with being beneath them. The years that many spent as servants account for the late age (26 +) of marriage in NW Europe

Both men and women usually married before the age of 20. Children were born to women of very young ages, therefor they had the ability to have many children, and were encouraged to do so. Russian households were commonly the largest, with the average around 13 members. Instead of Neolocalism, many usually stayed in their old households, with many generations under one roof.

The household is the basic unit of production and consumption. Everyone in the household worked, many times (especially in farming homes) members had two jobs. This type of working dominated skilled urban artisans, who employed both serfs as well as their own children.

The death of a father brought chaos, and the widow usually was desperate to remarry. High mortality rate ment households went through many reincarnations, step siblings were common

Women's job was mainly to run the household. For a women, marriage was an economic necessity. Marriage within a family was a joint economic undertaking. A young women might work for ten years or more to accumulate a dowry. The work of married women differed in regards to where they lived. In the fields, a women might do work of a serf, in more city households, where family owned a store/market, women might have been responsible for keeping track of items sold.