Amish family life (2024)

FAQs

Amish family life? ›

It's not unusual for an Amish family to have seven to ten children. You'll often see young children helping at market stands, picking corn, or tending to animals. Amish families approach life as a unit and children learn a strong work ethic from the very beginning.

Generally speaking, no. The Amish only marry within their communities.

The tract that contains the most Amish is far from uniform, however. The distribution shows a significant number of families with incomes below $49,000. Twenty three percent of households living in this Census Tract have average incomes of about $42,000. More fascinating is the emergent mode at $75,000.

Amish parents love their children just as any other parents.

Amish families are large. They believe in the injunction in the Book of Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply”, and families of 6 to 8 children are typical (with some communities averaging even 8 or 9 children per family).

I think the level of integration with the modern world varies community to community (some Amish communities are more insular than others) but the most conservative of them will probably use the same methods women used for hundreds of years — wrapping themselves with strips of material, or wrapping their shift/ ...

Dating among the Amish typically begins around age 16 with most Amish couples marrying between the ages of 20 and 22. To find a prospective date, the young adults socialize at functions such as frolics, church, or home visits. One of the most popular activities is the Sunday night singing.

In summer, conservative Amish tend to bathe at least twice weekly to eliminate dirt and sweat. The women may bathe more frequently and keep the home clean as well. New Order Amish may bathe more frequently than the Swatzentruber order, taking advantage of running water for showers or baths.

Amish Birth Culture

Members of this faith-based community typically practice home births, which are performed without modern medical interventions such as epidurals or pain relief medications.

Some Amish people have become quite wealthy. Often this is due to successful businesses including woodworking and construction. It's harder to tell who the Amish millionaires are, however, since status symbols are less visible (to the non-Amish eye, at least).

What time does Amish go to bed? ›

The Amish retire early, typically around 9:00 p.m. This gives them time to wind down from their day and prepare for sleep. Once they are in bed, they say a prayer and then drift off to sleep. The Amish believe it's important to get a good night's sleep, so they can be fresh for the next day.

I want my kids to behave well, naturally. Amish kids, apparently, do -- because of their community's belief system. Because parents don't foster entitlement in their kids, or purposely try to make them happy.

The Amish are happy to foster children that are in need; even ones who come from outside the Amish community. As with non-Amish people, fostering a child inevitably leads to a more permanent arrangement, such as adoption.

All types of birth control, and also all forms of natural family planning such as calendar-based methods, are forbidden in Old-Order Amish communities. However, especially in recent years, more Amish women have begun using contraception.

Most Amish have an unwavering stance against alcohol. They see it as a vice that inevitably leads to temptations. And these temptations could lead them astray from their path of devotion. They do their best to make responsible choices and support those in their community who need help and understanding.

One consequence of observing these and other core beliefs is that the Amish refrain from accepting Social Security and Medicare benefits, and in some cases from even obtaining a Social Security number, at least until later in life.

To be married within the Amish community you must be baptized in the church, and non-Amish are therefore not able to marry within this unique community. The Amish wedding season in Lancaster County, PA begins in October and ends in March, since farm work is scarce during these months.

The Amish take courtship very seriously. Its intention is to find a life partner and start a family. Marriage is deemed a sacred act in the eyes of God. As marriages between Amish and outsiders are forbidden, instances of Amish dating outsiders are rare but not entirely unheard of.

The Amish may, however, remarry after the death of a spouse. Remarriage after a spouse's death isn't viewed as adultery, and there's no penalty against it, unlike Amish divorce. Widows and widowers may enter a courtship and remarry, and many Amish people do after losing a loved one.

A young Amish couple will typically date for one to two years (two years being the longer end of the spectrum) before they begin to talk about marriage. At this point it is typically assumed the couple will become wed and no formal proposal is made.