Product Code Database
A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeding and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some societies, the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship. Wet-nursing existed in societies around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century. The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century.
There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk, or in some cases to lactation at all. For example, she may have a chronic or acute illness, and either the illness itself, or the treatment for it, reduces or stops her milk. This absence of lactation may be temporary or permanent.
There was a greater need for wet nurses when the rates of infant abandonment and maternal death, during and shortly after childbirth, were high.O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271 There was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own infant mortality.
Some women chose not to breastfeed for social reasons. For upper-class women, breastfeeding was considered unfashionable, in the sense that it not only prevented them from being able to wear the fashionable clothing of their time, but it was also thought to ruin their figures.Emily E. Stevens, Thelma E. Patrick and Rita Pickler, "A History of Infant Feeding," Journal of Perinatal Education (Spring 2009): 32–39. (accessed 10 February 2016). Hiring a wet nurse was less expensive than having to hire someone else to help run the family business and/or take care of the family household duties in their place. Some women chose to hire wet nurses purely to escape from the confining and time-consuming chore of breastfeeding.O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271.
Gabrielle Palmer,Lecturer in Human Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and author of The Politics of Breastfeeding author of The Politics of Breastfeeding, states:
In pre-modern times, it was incorrectly believed that wet nurses could pass on personality traits to infants, such as Lamarckism.
The importance of the wet nurse to ancient Roman culture is indicated by the founding myth of Romulus and Remus, who were Child exposure but nursed by the she-wolf, as portrayed in the Capitoline Wolf bronze sculpture. The goddess Rumina was invoked among other birth and child development deities to promote the flow of breast milk.
Taking care of babies was a well-paid, respectable, and popular job for many working-class women. In the 18th century, a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than an average man could as a labourer. Up until the 19th century, most wet-nursed infants were sent far from their families to live with their new caregiver for up to the first three years of their life.Wolf, Jacqueline H, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (2004). As many as 80% of wet-nursed babies who lived like this died during infancy.
During the Victorian era, women took in babies for money and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant mortality. The wet nurse at this period was most likely a single woman who previously had given birth to an illegitimate child.Acton, W., "Unmarried Wet Nurses", Lancet Vol. 1 (1859): 175. There were two types of wet nurses by this time: those on poor relief, who struggled to provide sufficiently for themselves or their charges, and the professionals, who were well paid and respected.
Upper-class women tended to hire wet nurses to work within their own homes, as part of a large household of servants.
Wet nurses also worked at foundling hospitals, establishments for abandoned children. Their own children would likely be sent away, normally brought up by the bottle rather than being breastfed. Valerie Fildes, author of Breasts, Bottle and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, argues that "In effect, wealthy parents frequently 'bought' the life of their infant for the life of another."Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 193.
Wet nursing decreased in popularity during the mid-19th century, as medical journalists wrote about its previously undocumented dangers. Fildes argued that "Britain has been lumped together with the rest of Europe in any discussion of the qualities, terms of employment and conditions of the wet nurse, and particularly the abuses of which she was supposedly guilty."Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 152. C. H. F. Routh, a medical journalist writing in the late 1850s, listed the evils of wet nursing, such as the abandonment of the wet nurses' own children, higher infant mortality, and an increased physical and moral risk to a nursed child.Routh, C. H. F., "On the Mortality of Infants in Foundling Institutions, and Generally, As Influenced By the Absence of Breast-Milk". British Medical Journal 1 (6 February 1858): 105. While this argument was not founded in any sort of proof, the emotional arguments of medical researchers, coupled with the protests of other critics, slowly increased public knowledge; the practice declined, replaced by maternal breastfeeding and bottle-feeding.Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 243.
The Bureau of Wet Nurses was created in Paris in 1769 to serve two main purposes: it supplied parents with wet nurses, as well as helping lessen the neglect of babies by controlling monthly salary payments. In order to become a wet nurse, women had to meet a few qualifications, including physical fitness and good moral character; they were often judged on their age, their health, the number of children they had, as well as their breast shape, breast size, breast texture, nipple shape, and nipple size, since all these aspects were believed to affect the quality of a woman's milk.Paula S. Fass (ed.), "Wet Nursing", Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (2004): 884–887. In 1874, the French government introduced a law named after , which "mandated that every infant placed with a paid guardian outside the parents' home be registered with the state so that the French government is able to monitor how many children are placed with wet nurses and how many wet-nursed children have died".
Wet nurses were hired to work in hospitals to nurse babies who were premature, ill, or abandoned. During the 18th and 19th centuries, congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality.Sherwood, Joan, Infection of the Innocents: Wet Nurses, Infants, and Syphilis in France, 1780–1900. McGill-Queen's University Press (2010). The Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to use mercury as a treatment; however, it could not be safely administered to infants. In 1780, it began the process of giving mercury to wet nurses, who could then transmit the treatment in their milk to infected infants.
The practice of wet-nursing was still widespread during World War I, according to the American Red Cross. Working-class women would leave their babies with wet nurses so they could get jobs in factories.
Child-minding, different from wet-nursing, was also commonly an additional job on top of child rearing and nursery tending. Employed wet nurses were typically paid low wages and worked long hours.Saari, Zilal; Yusof, Farahwahida Mohd; Rosman, Arieff Salleh; Nizar, Tamar Jaya; Muhamad, Siti Norlina; Ahmad, Shahrel Ahmad Shuhel (2016). "Wet Nursing: A Historical Review and its Ideal Characteristics". Perintis eJournal. 6 (1): 6. ISSN 2232-0725. Workers in the 1900s demanded work contracts to provide stable wages.""Experiences of a 'Hired Girl'": An Early Twentieth-Century Domestic Worker Speaks Out". historymatters.gmu.edu. Retrieved 22 February 2024. Wet nursing work was rarely consistent, wet nurses were stereotypically poor ladies from rural areas who offered their services for fees.
Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet-nursed babies, historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet-nursed and for how long, whether they lived at home or elsewhere, and how many lived or died.Golden, Janet, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle, Cambridge University Press (1996) The best source of evidence is found in the "Recruitment" ads of newspapers, through complaints about wet nurses in magazines, and through medical journals that acted as employment agencies.
This constitutes the origin of the archetype of the aleksandrinka as a wet nurse, which came to overpower any other representation of the aleksandrinstvo, despite the fact that empirical evidence demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of aleksandrinke at any time worked as wet nurses. The majority of aleksandrinke were working as nannies or chamber maids, they were not breastfeeding the children they were taking care of. The emphasis on lactaction, which marks the hypersexualization of the aleksandrinstvo, was part of the rhetorical stigma surrounding this phenomenon in Slovenia.
In some societies, the wet nurse was hired as any other employee. In others, however, she had a special relationship with the family, which could incur kinship rights. In Vietnamese family structure, for example, the wet nurse is known as Nhũ mẫu, mẫu meaning "mother". Islam has a highly codified system of milk kinship known as rada. George III of the United Kingdom, born two months premature, had a wet nurse whom he so valued all his life, that her daughter was appointed laundress to the Royal Household, "a sinecure place of great emolument".
Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in a reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing.
For some Americans, the subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a goodwill tour to Sierra Leone with UNICEF in 2008, American Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breastfeed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than Hayek's daughter, who had not yet been weaned.
In Asia, Lady Kasuga was the wet nurse of the third Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Iemitsu. Lu Lingxuan was a lady in waiting who served as wet nurse to the emperor Gao Wei. She became exceedingly powerful during his reign and was often criticized by historians for her corruption and treachery. Chinese emperors honoured the Nurse empress dowager. Wet nurses were also common during the Mughal period, with almost every Mughal prince having one. Some prominent ones are Maham Anga for Akbar and Dai Anga for Shah Jahan. Shin Myo Myat was the mother of King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), and the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti. The last Emperor of China, Puyi, described Wang Lianshou as being the only person who was able to control him: "from my infancy until the time I grew up, only my wet nurse, because of her simple language, was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people."
In the Ottoman Empire, after the slave Zafire Hatun gave birth to her son Osman, she was selected to be the wet nurse of future sultan Mehmed IV. Mehmed's father, Sultan Ibrahim, is said to have taken a liking to Zafire, and he reportedly began to favour Osman over Mehmed, eventually resulting in Zafire and Osman leaving the harem.
In Europe, Hodierna of St Albans was the mother of Alexander Neckam and wet nurse of Richard I of England, and Mrs. Pack was a wet nurse to William, Duke of Gloucester (1689–1700). Geneviève Poitrine was a wet nurse of the Dauphin of France, Louis Joseph, son of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Poitrine was accused of transmitting tuberculosis to the Dauphin and triggering his infant death when aged seven,Arnaud Delalande. Le Cœur du Roi : Révolution 1 (The Heart of the King), Grasset, 2017, , although since very few pre-adolescent children die from TB, this accusation may have been the result of a misdiagnosis.
Some non-royal wet nurses have also been written about. Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb was the foster parent and wet nurse of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Petronella Muns was, with her employer, the first Western woman to visit Japan. Naomi Baumslag, author of Milk, Money and Madness, described the legendary capacity of Judith Waterford: "In 1831, on her 81st birthday, she could still produce breast milk. In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts (four pints or 1.9 litres) of breast milk a day."
|
|
