Up until the 12th century or so, medieval legal writers weren’t particularly concerned with contraception.  They certainly didn’t look at it positively, but they also didn’t consider it an issue worth spending much time on except where it came up in connection with other concerns.  The 12th century saw greater focus on the issue, but specific condemnation of it independently of other issues only came 400 years later, in the 16th century.  It’s worth nothing though, that however much contraceptive practices were condemned, no serious effort was ever made to stop them.
 
St. Augustine argued that sex with any sort of contraceptive intent was a serious sin.  Married couples should simply stop having sex at all once they’d had a couple of children.  Beyond this statement, he seems not to have touched on the issue.  Similarly, the Penitentials of the next several centuries didn’t really focus on or specifically mention contraception much.  Instead, as a rule, they tended to discourage any sexual position that didn’t have a chance of resulting in a pregnancy as sinful in and of themselves.
 
The 11th and 12th centuries saw rising concern with what was “natural” and what wasn’t.  St. Peter Damian considered most forms of contraceptive sex to be “against nature.”  A bit more than a century later, Gratian called it “inappropriate use of sex organs,” but also considered such things only mildly sinful when the people involved were married to each other.
 
The 12th century was also when legal and religious writers began paying more attention to the issue.  A few people argued that both the use of contraception and sex with contraceptive intent invalidated a marriage entirely.  Others said that while marriages entered into with the intent to avoid having children were illegal, they were still binding.  Some compared the use of contraception to adultery, while many considered it serious spiritual pollution at the very least.
 
The thing is, though, for all that several writers had opinions on the topic, contraception wasn’t considered seriously as a separate issue until the 16th century.  It was mostly a minor point among far greater concerns.

Sources/Further Reading:
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Birth Control and Abortion in the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net

The children of Roman freedwomen existed in an odd position, both legally and socially.  Their mother’s legal status throughout her pregnancy and at the time of childbirth determined their status as freeborn or slave.  It also governed whether they legally and socially belonged to her or her (former) owners, a question that on at least one occasion prompted a lawsuit.  Lastly, only her freeborn children counted towards the four children necessary for her freedom from guardianship under the Julian Marriage Laws.
 
Children born outside of a Roman marriage followed the status of their mother.  So the child of as slave was a slave, but if she was freed before its birth, her child would be freeborn and had all the associated benefits.  This did not necessarily include citizenship though.  A freedperson automatically got citizenship if they were freed formally.  Informal manumission, however, meant that the woman any children she had would be Junian Latins, not Roman citizens, with some of the same rights, but without other significant ones.  Marriage was limited to citizens, as was the right to make a will.  And since only children born from a marriage were legitimate and illegitimate children followed their mother’s status, any children a woman who was informally freed would be Junian Latins as she was.  There were ways to gain citizenship, but it was an involved process and if the woman died before completing it, her property went not to her offspring, but to her patrons.
 
If, however, the woman was formally freed, whether in front of a magistrate or through someone’s will, she gained citizenship.  In that case, if she married, any children she had after that would also be citizens and would be under the potestas of her husband.  If she didn’t marry, any children she had would still be citizens, but they would be sui iuris, free from potestas but not necessarily guardianship, from birth.

Sources/Further Reading:
Gardner, Jane F. “Legal Stumbling-Blocks for Lower-Class Families in Rome.” In The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space, edited by Beryl Rawson and Paul Weaver, 35-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Rawson, 7-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Weaver, P. R. C. “Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen).” In Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 166-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

As in Ancient Athens, Ancient Roman sumptuary laws (laws that regulate consumption and display of wealth) were mostly aimed at the upper classes.  There are two in particular that we know of by name, plus a third instituted by the Emperor Elagabalus.  In all three of these instances, the laws were aimed far more directly at women and their property than the Greek laws had been and may have been even more specifically intended to control wealthy women, perhaps because of the widespread notion that women were more likely to spend money uselessly on luxury goods.
 
The earliest of these, the Oppian Law, dates to 215 BCE, at the height of the Second Punic War.  It prohibited women from owning more than a certain amount of gold, wearing purple-trimmed or otherwise multicolored clothing, or riding in animal-drawn vehicles in cities and towns.  There were two reasons for this specific focus on women.  First, with the deaths of so many men in the war, women inherited most of the wealth.  Second women were associated with extravagant and useless displays of luxury, considered inappropriate with the fear of Hannibal’s approaching armies and with so many in mourning.  Men, it was presumably assumed would spend more on the war effort than women.  The law wasn’t repealed until 20 years later, six years after the end of the war, when the women of Rome demonstrated in the streets.
 
The Voconian Law, from 169 BCE barred the wealthiest of Rome from making a woman their heir or allowing a woman to inherit more than a small portion of their property.  It only applied to cases where a will existed.  Women could still inherit in cases where no will was made.*  Again, the point was to keep wealth out of the hands of women, who it was assumed would spend it on frivolous things.  Augustus’ marriage legislation relaxed the terms of this law enough that it essentially had no force.
 
The Emperor Elagabalus instituted a series of laws detailing what specifically women of different ranks could wear and display.  The story of a senate of women put together to decide one the details is almost certainly not true.  The laws were repealed on Elagabalus’ death.
 
 
 
*Another way around this was by fideicommissum, or nominally making someone one’s heir with the understanding that they would pass it on to a third party after one’s death.

Sources/Further Reading:
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women's History & Ancient History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Primogeniture, where the eldest son inherits all (or nearly all) of the family property, especially land, was not universal throughout the Middle Ages.  By the eleventh century it had become fairly common, especially among the upper classes, but it was still nowhere near universal.  Even where it was the rule, people sometimes found ways around it.  It certainly had benefits for the family as a whole, but it also created a number of problems, both for individuals and for society.
 
In the Early Middle Ages, even noble titles didn’t necessarily follow the male line by primogeniture.  At first they weren’t even inheritable.  Instead, the king decided who would get the title and the associated land on the previous person’s death.  Eventually though, it just became easier to give it to one of the person’s heirs.  Over time, “heir” became codified as “eldest son or next male relative”
 
Before primogeniture became the rule (and in places where it never took hold), the inheritance was generally divided up between siblings, usually but not always equally.  The benefit of this system was that parents could make sure each of their offspring had a share and therefore a way to support themselves, daughters included, though sometimes they received less.  The problem, of course, was that it meant family land got broken down into smaller and smaller pieces over time, reducing the resources any one individual could draw on.
 
Primogeniture meant that family land and other wealth stayed mostly in one piece, keeping the inheritance largely intact for each successive generation.  This system, though, had its own problems.  For one thing, it meant that unless all of their brothers died,* daughters inherited nothing more than their dowries, which usually weren’t under their control.  Younger sons had no hope of an inheritance either unless their older brothers died or they married an heiress.  It also meant that if a man failed to produce a son or something happened to all of his sons, the property might well pass right out of the family’s hands, going with his daughter to a new family.
 
 
*Or were otherwise made unable to inherit.  Monks, for example, renounced any claim on the family property.

Sources/Further Reading:
Gies, Frances and Joseph Gies. Marriage and Family i the Middle Ages. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Erler, Mary and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds. Women and Power in the Middle Ages. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Winks, Robin W. and Teofilo F Ruiz. Medieval Europe and the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Sumptuary laws are those that regulate consumption and display, particularly conspicuous consumption.  Most of what we know about Athenian sumptuary laws relates to funerals, regulating everything from where certain portions of the ceremonies could be held, to what people (especially women) could wear, to what the stela (tombstone) could look like.  They also regulated what people, once again, especially women, could wear in public and how extravagant dinner parties could be, usually in an effort to control the upper classes.
 
There were two particular instances when some rather strict laws were put in force in Athens.  The first was around the time of Solon in the 6th century BCE, while the second was several hundred years later, in the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BCE.  A good number of Solon’s restrictions concerned the behaviour and appearance of women, what they could wear, who could ride in a cart, how different classes were to be identified.  Now, some of this was to regulate the women themselves, but as several scholars have pointed out, a lot of it was to control their husbands.  At this point in time, especially among the wealthy of Athens, a man’s wife and daughter’s appearances were a big part of how he displayed his wealth and power.  By defining who could wear what and curbing the worst of the excesses, Solon reinforced the existing social order.  He limited obvious social mobility to ensure that people were more concerned about class differences than about taking his power and tried to minimize social friction between men of the same class.
 
The second major instance took place in the late 4th century BCE when Demetrios of Phaleron ruled the city for the Macedonian king Cassander.  Once again this was a man who needed to reinforce social distinctions.  At the time, the wealthy of Athens could be divided into two groups: old money and new money.  By passing strict sumptuary laws, especially those concerning funerals, he tried to curb displays of wealth that only fueled the antagonism between these two groups and maintain stability.

Sources/Further Reading:
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Small, David. "A Defective Master Narrative in Greek Archaeology" - Academia.edu
Shipley, Graham. The Greek World after Alexander 323-30 B.C. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Ancient Rome had no public institutions to care for so-called “irregular children,” that is illegitimate children, orphans, and foundlings.  There were public assistance programs, but there was no concept of children outside a family, so children who, for whatever reason, had no place with their birth parents generally wound up adopted, abandoned, or as alumni, foster children.  This last appears not to have been particularly common, but it did happen.
 
In cases like this, someone or someones, generally a married couple would raise a child as a member of their household, sometimes as their own child, sometimes also as part of their legal familia.  The problem is, it seems to have been uncommon enough that the term alumnus/a, here and elsewhere translated as “foster child,” covered a rather broad range of situations.  Essentially it covered any child raised by people not their birth parents and who didn’t go so far as to legally adopt them.
 
To some extent, these relationships also weren’t incompatible with the possible slave status of the child.  There was a term for a child born into slavery within the household: uernae.  Such children might also be considered alumni of the household though, especially if they were later freed.
 
One example of this might be the case of Petronia Iusta.  Her mother, Petronia Vitalis, a freedwoman of Petronius Stephanus and Calatoria Themis, had left Iusta to be raised her former masters for several years.  Eventually she returned to claim her daughter and pay them for the cost of maintaining her.  The subsequent legal dispute over Iusta’s status as freeborn or freed is interesting, but not relevant here.*  Iusta, whether she was born slave or free, was raised as a child of the household and was therefore considered an alumna, a foster daughter.  Because of that, while she wasn’t necessarily entitled to any inheritance, not having been adopted, she did have a certain social connection to them beyond being either their freedwoman or the daughter of one.
 
 
*Basically, Vitalis claimed that she had been free at the time of Iusta’s birth and that Iusta was therefore freeborn.  Calatoria Themis, on the other hand, claimed that Iusta had been born a slave and was later manumitted by Themis herself, making her Themis’s freedwomen.  Neither side had the documentation to back it up.

Sources/Further Reading:
Rawson, Beryl. "Adult-Child Relationships in Roman Society." In Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 7-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Weaver, P. R. C. "Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen)." In Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome, edited by Beryl Rawson, 166-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

In a primarily agricultural society, one of the questions that is going to come up is “What happens with the people who are too old to do the heavier farm work?”  Many of the peasants of High and Late Medieval England weren’t prepared to leave things to chance.  Some presumably made informal arrangements with their children or other family members.  Others made up more formal maintenance contracts with a person or people of their choice.
 
What this meant was that the elderly person or couple, the pensioner(s), would give their land and the associated rights and obligations to a younger person in return for material support and services.  So, for example, an elderly couple would hand over their land to their son, essentially allowing him to inherit before their deaths, in return for a place to stay (usually in the house with a spot by the fire), stipulated amounts of food, fuel, and clothing, the use of certain household goods,* and services like having their clothes washed regularly.
 
Most of these people were not inclined to leave things to chance.  They were very specific about what the contract entitled them to.  There was, though, a lot of variation in what that was and the more land a person had, the more they could bargain for.  Someone with 20 acres of land could go so far as to demand that an entirely separate cottage be built for them, while someone with only 2 or 3 might have to offer to work for as long as they were able to.  These things tended to be well enforced in the manor courts, with punishments for not providing the stipulated goods and services ranging from simple fines to the return of the land to its earlier owner, who could then make a new contract with someone else if they so wished.**
 
Before the 14th century and the plague, most of these contracts were made between family members.  Pensioners were far more likely to be single people than couples and they usually, though not always, made contracts for themselves rather than letting someone else do it.  They gave their land most often to single men, but sometimes to couples and occasionally to single women.  The number of contracts made with family members dropped dramatically with the advent of the plague.  Suddenly, people couldn’t count on their families to still be alive to care for them in their old age.  They did, however, have a way to ensure that someone would.
 
 
 
*Bed linens and the like, for example
**Of course, we only have the evidence of cases that actually made it to the courts.  Someone with less land and therefore less bargaining power was probably much less likely to make it to the courts.

Sources/Further Reading:
Clark, Elaine. "Some Aspects of Social Security in Medieval England." Journal of Family History (1982): 307-320. [Can be found online here.]
Gies, Frances and Joseph Gies. Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
Hanawalt, Barbara. The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford University Press, 1986.

The legitimacy of children was, in Ancient Rome, an issue of concern, though it had perhaps less stigma associated with it than it would in later eras.  By definition, any child born outside of a valid, Roman marriage between citizens was considered illegitimate.  In other words, no matter how valid the relationships of their parents, the children of concubines, contubernales, and Roman citizens who wed non-citizens were all denied the legitimate status.

Much of what we know about illegitimacy concerns the wealthier classes.  As far as we can tell, it was not that much of an issue during the Republic.  Recorded examples of illegitimate children are few, and it’s likely that most such children were aborted, exposed, or simply raised as though they were the legitimate children of the mother’s husband.  By the time of the Empire illegitimacy was a bit more of a concern.  Augustus and other emperors created laws criminalizing adultery and regulating inheritance by illegitimate children.  How strongly these were enforced though, depended on the emperor.

Originally, illegitimate children weren’t entitled to any inheritance unless they were named in a will.  Eventually, they were allowed to inherit from their mothers even without a will, where before property had gone first to legitimate children, then to her male relatives (brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins).  At this point the mother of an illegitimate child was also allowed to inherit from her child if they died intestate.*

Among the lower classes, one’s status as freeborn, freed, or unfree was far more important and relevant than legitimacy.  In the case of a child born outside of a valid Roman marriage, the child followed the status of the mother.  The child of a slave was born a slave.  The child of a free woman** was freeborn.  This would cause some concern with the rising numbers of free women living as the contubernales of highly influential slave men.  The child’s illegitimacy was only really important here in that it meant they inherited their mother’s free status rather than being unfree like their father.

*Without making a will.

**Or a woman freed and subsequently enslaved again during her pregnancy.  Legally, at least.  How that worked out in practice was most likely another matter entirely.

Sources/Further Reading:
Edwards, Catharine. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1993.
Rawson, Beryl. The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.
McGinn, Thomas A.J. Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

During the three centuries of Ptolemaic rule (approximately 323 BCE – 30 CE) the legal status and capabilities of ordinary Greek women changed, allowing them some of the rights and responsibilities had by Egyptian women.  Though most Greek city-states were not so restrictive as Athens, all except Sparta required that women have a kyrios and limited the amount of property they could own or dispose of.

Basically, there two sets of laws were enforced under Ptolemaic rule, one Greek, one Egyptian.  Under Greek law, a woman required kyrios.  She could own and manage property, but could not make major transactions without his consent.  She could, however, petition the government without his involvement if necessary.  Egyptian law was not so restrictive.  Women did not need a guardian and could make property transactions on their own.  They were, however, expected to consider their own interests less important than those of a husband.

The thing is, these laws did not apply separately to each respective group.  Over time, less in the earlier period, more later, Greek women began to take on more of the Egyptian model.  They began disposing of common marital property and managing businesses when their husbands were traveling, only asking permission for transactions after the fact.*  Sonless, widowed mothers gave their daughters in marriage.  In short, Greek women began taking on aspects of Egyptian law and custom that granted them a little more freedom.

Part of this came out of the contact between two sets of laws and the fact that, within certain limitations, many Greek women were able to take advantage of some of the freedoms granted under Egyptian law in their own lives.  This was helped along by the reality that they no longer had a polis to protect and regulate their lives.  Without those safeguards, Greek women had to have more economic and legal freedoms, if only to protect themselves and their family’s property.


*Though it is important to note that they still asked for transactions to be approved, just afterwards instead of before.

Sources/Further Reading:
Pomeroy, Sarah. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
Johansson, Nathalie. "Women in Egypt - how the status of women in Egypt changed during the Ptolemaic Period."  Dissertation.  2010. Academia.edu [Link is here]
Pomeroy, Sarah. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

From a legal perspective, getting a divorce was relatively easy for an Athenian citizen.  Marriage and divorce were largely regarded as a private, familial affair.  These things were contracted between families with little to no involvement by authorities.  The state only stepped when conflict arose or public verification of a woman’s statement was needed.  Socially though, a divorce could be quite difficult to get and as a result seems to have remained relatively rare.

There were several ways a divorce could go.  The husband could simply declare the marriage over and send his wife away.  No justification was required, but he did have to either return the dowry or pay 18 percent interest on it to his ex-wife’s guardian, which could prove a significant financial burden.  The political and social consequences that might result from angering a wife’s family also made many men think twice.  Women with less influential families might not have that protection.  In a amicable divorce, the soon-to-be-ex-husband would often arrange his wife’s next marriage, so she would spend little to no time unmarried.*

A wife could also divorce her husband, though not so easily.  She had to appear before the archon with a male relative and ask for the divorce.  The one example we have was not successful.  The wife, Hipparete, was seized by her husband, Alcibiades, and dragged back to his house.  Women who appealed to their male relatives to negotiate a divorce generally had more luck.  A wife with an influential family or with a big dowry could hold a fair amount of power in her husband’s house.

There were two other ways a divorce could go.  A husband whose wife committed adultery or was raped was legally required to divorce her.  She then lost the right to participate in religious festivals and usually could not leave her family’s house at all.  The possibility of remarriage was not lost to her,** but it was unlikely.

There was also the case of the epikleros.  A married woman who became an heiress might be required to divorce and marry one of her kinsmen.  A married man who had the opportunity to marry an heiress was quite likely to do so.

A divorce might happen for any of several reasons including an inability to get along, childlessness, possibility of increased inheritance, or adultery, to name a few.  Though it could be as simple as a man sending his wife away, negotiation between families generally played a major part in the proceedings.


*Being unmarried was considered a terrible fate for a citizen woman in Athens.
**See note*

Sources/Further Reading:
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Powell, Anton. Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001.
Tetlow, Elizabeth Meier. Women, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Law: Volume 2 Ancient Greece. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005.
Cohn-Haft, Louis. "Divorce in Classical Athens." The Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 1-14.