Wet nursing, which began as early as 2000 B.C., was once a widely accepted option for mothers who could not or did not want to breast-feed, but it faced criticism during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
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Lepore further explored this history in her 2013 book The Mansion of Happiness, noting that the daguerreotypes were something of a fad in the United States, where wet nursing was not as common as in Europe, and these visuals may have reinforced the emphasis on maternal femininity and motherhood.
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While other populations in the United States may be more open to wet- nursing, the cultural attitude within African-American communities towards wet-nursing remains one deeply affected by the generational trauma of wet- nursing during slavery.Lutenbacher, Melanie, Sharon Karp, and Elizabeth Moore. "Reflections of Black Women Who Choose to Breastfeed: Influences, Challenges, and Supports". Maternal & Child Health Journal 20, no.
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Suzanne Dixon, Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001), p. 62; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214. It was considered admirable for upperclass women to breastfeed their own children, but unusual and old-fashioned in the Imperial era.Bradley, "Wet- Nursing at Rome," p. 201.
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The bureau of wet nurses in Paris Wet nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV, the mid 17th century. In 18th century France, approximately 90% of infants were wet nursed, mostly sent away to live with their wet nurses.O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopaedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271. In Paris in 1780, only 1000 of the 21,000 babies born that year were nursed by their own mother.
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O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopaedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271 (Sometimes both babies would be fathered by the same man, the slave-owner; see Children of the plantation.) Visual representations of wet-nursing practices in enslaved communities are most prevalent in representations of the Mammy archetype caricature.Thompson, Barbara, ed. "The Body of a Myth: Embodying the Black Mammy Figure in Visual Culture". In Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body.
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Donating breast milk can be traced back to the practice of wet nursing. The first record of regulations regarding the sharing of breastmilk are found in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1800 BC). These regulations were motivated by the long-held belief that infants inherit the nurse's traits through their breast milk. By the 11th century European culture considered breastfeeding indecent, which led wet nursing to become common practice among royalty and aristocracy of Europe.
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Catherine Willoughby, formerly Duchess of Suffolk, and her later husband Richard Bertie, are forced into exile, taking their baby and wetnurse Wet nursing used to be commonplace in the United Kingdom. Working-class women both provided and received wet nursing services. 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 her husband could as a labourer.
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A funerary stele (akin to a gravestone) erected by Roman citizen Lucius Nutrius Gallus in the 2nd half of 1st century AD for himself, his wetnurse, and other members of his family and household In ancient Rome, well-to-do households would have had wet-nurses (Latin nutrices, singular nutrix) among their slaves and freedwomen,Keith R. Bradley, "Wet- Nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 213. but some Roman women were wet-nurses by profession, and the Digest of Roman law even refers to a wage dispute for wet-nursing services (nutricia).Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214. The landmark known as the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") may have been a place where wet-nurses could be hired.
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Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 91 (P. Oxy. 91) is a receipt for wages for wet nursing, written in Greek. The manuscript was written on papyrus in the form of a sheet. It was discovered in Oxyrhynchus.
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Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press. Pages 41–42 Governments in Europe started to worry about the decline of the workforce because of the high mortality rates among newborns. Wet nursing was considered one of the main problems.
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However, some researchers believe that allo-nursing and milk sharing may have been part of our evolutionary past. Evidence of milk sharing history include the wet nursing practices of the 20th century, milk kinship among Islamic tradition, and documentation of allo-nursing in primates species.
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Even women of the working classes or slaves might have their babies nursed,Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," pp. 201–202 et passim, especially p. 210. and the Roman-era Greek gynecologist Soranus offers detailed advice on how to choose a wet-nurse.Soranus of Ephesus, Gynaecology 2.19.24–5.
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Enslaved black woman wet- nursing White infant British colonists brought the practice of wet nursing with them to North America. Since the arrangement of sending infants away to live with wet nurses was the cause of so many infant deaths, by the 19th century, Americans adopted the practice of having wet nurses live with the employers in order to nurse and care for their charges. This practice had the effect of increasing the death rate for wet nurses' own babies. Many employers would have only kept a wet nurse for a few months at a time since it was believed that the quality of a woman's breast milk would lessen over time.
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Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2008. Images such as the one in this section represent both a historically accurate practice of enslaved black women wet-nursing their owner's white children as well as sometimes an exaggerated racist caricaturization of a stereotype of enslaved black women as "Mammy" characters.
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Inscriptions such as religious dedications and epitaphs indicate that a nutrix would be proud of her profession.Celia E. Schultz, Women's Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 54; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 202ff. One even records a nutritor lactaneus, a male "milk nurse" who presumably used a bottle.
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M. Golden, "Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died?" Greece & Rome 35 (1988) 152–163; Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 1986, 1992), p. 202; Beryl Rawson, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 104.
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A Russian wet nurse, c. 1913 Wet nursing is an ancient practice, common to many cultures. It has been linked to social class, where monarchies, the aristocracy, nobility or upper classes had their children wet-nursed for the benefit of the child's health, and sometimes in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly. Exclusive breastfeeding inhibits ovulation in some women (Lactational amenorrhea).
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He was employed by Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Borghini's education as a Benedictine monk molded the lives of children in the hospital. Borghini, after five months of becoming superintendent, wanted to get hold of the hospital's operai to eliminate wet nurses who defrauded the hospital. One of the main issues was that wet nursing increased the number of pregnancy.
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Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press. Page 68 The biologist and physician Linnaeus, the English doctor Cadogan, Rousseau, and the midwife Anel le Rebours described in their writings the advantages and necessity of women breastfeeding their own children and discouraged the practice of wet nursing. Sir Hans Sloane noted the value of breast-feeding in reducing infant mortality in 1748.
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Wet-nursing had become common by the fifteenth century. Fosterage was common among Highland clan leaders. From the age of three children took part in imaginative play and more formal games such as football, golf, archery, and various bowling games. The rich may have taken part in hunting and hawking and there is evidence from the sixteenth century of bear-baiting, cock-fighting and dogfighting.
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Evidence for bottle-feeding among the Romans is very slim, and the nutritor may have simply been a nursemaid; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214. Greek nurses were preferred,Soranus, Gynaecology 2.44. and the Romans believed that a baby who had a Greek nutrix could imbibe the language and grow up speaking Greek as fluently as Latin.Richard Tames, Ancient Roman Children (Heineman, 2003), p. 11.
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In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora sent the baby for wet-nursing to Virginia (Jennie) Prentiss, a formerly enslaved African-American woman and a neighbor. Prentiss was an important maternal figure throughout London's life, and he would later refer to her as his primary source of love and affection as a child.
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Baby farming is the historical practice of accepting custody of an infant or child in exchange for payment in late-Victorian Era Britain and, less commonly, in Australia and the United States. If the infant was young, this usually included wet-nursing (breast-feeding by a woman not the mother). Some baby farmers "adopted" children for lump-sum payments, while others cared for infants for periodic payments.
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Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet nursed children in the United States, historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet-nursed, for how long they were wet-nursed, whether they lived at home or else where while they wet-nursed, as well as how many wet-nursed babies lived or died.Golden, Janet, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle, Cambridge University Press (1996) The only evidence which exists pertaining to wet-nursing in the United States is found in the help wanted ads of newspapers, through complaints about wet nurses in magazines, and through medical journals which acted as employment agencies for wet-nurses. In the Southern United States, it was common practice for enslaved black women to be forced to be wet nurses to their owners' children. In some instances, the enslaved child and the white child would be raised together in their younger years.
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A wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to feed her baby. Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century, wet-nursing could save the baby's life. There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk, or in some cases to lactate at all. Reasons include the serious or chronic illness of the mother and her treatment which creates a temporary difficulty to nursing.
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2 (February 2016): 231–239. For some Americans, the subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill trip to Sierra Leone in 2008, Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breast-feed 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 her daughter, who had not yet been weaned.
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The practice of wet nursing declined by the 19th century due to concerns regarding unhealthy lifestyles among nurses. Consequently, the medical community began researching the effects of alternative nutrition on neonates. Theodor Escherich of the University of Vienna conducted studies from 1902 to 1911 investigating different sources of nutrition and their effect on neonates. His studies demonstrated that breastfed neonate's intestinal bacteria was significantly different compared to neonates fed by other means.
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In 1865, the first infant food was invented. Throughout history, mothers who could not breastfeed their babies either employed a wet nurse or, less frequently, prepared food for their babies, a process known as "dry nursing". Baby food composition varied according to region and economic status. In Europe and North America during the early 19th century, the prevalence of wet nursing began to decrease, while the practice of feeding babies mixtures based on animal milk rose in popularity.
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Additionally, a mother's taking drugs (prescription or recreational) may necessitate a wet nurse if a drug in any way changes the content of the mother's milk. There was a greater need for wetnurses 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 babies had died, also not uncommon. Some women choose not to breastfeed for social reasons.
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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.
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Mothers also lacked the support of their husbands to breastfeed their children, since 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. Wet nurses have also been used when a mother cannot produce sufficient breast milk, i.e.
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This is common among many primate groups and indicates that young females may gain valuable experience in raising infants that will help them in the future. It is important to note that allomaternal nursing (wet nursing) is common in wedge-capped capuchins but very rare among other primates. Even more interesting is that this nursing behavior in wedge-capped capuchins is not correlated with relatedness. This behavior may be an example of reciprocity, where the favor of one female nursing another’s infant is eventually returned.
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The 1908 Children's Act, also known as Children and Young Persons Act, part of the Children's Charter was a piece of government legislation passed by the Liberal government, as part of the British Liberal Party's liberal reforms package. The Act was informally known as the Children's Charter and surrounded controversy. It established juvenile courts and introduced the registration of foster parents, thus regulating baby-farming and wet-nursing and trying to stamp out infanticide. Local authorities were also granted powers to keep poor children out of the poorhouse/workhouse and protect them from abuse.
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Attempts were made in 15th-century Europe to use cow or goat milk, but these attempts were not successful. In the 18th century, flour or cereal mixed with broth were introduced as substitutes for breastfeeding, but this was also unsuccessful. Improved infant formulas appeared in the mid-19th century, providing an alternative to wet nursing, and even breastfeeding itself. During the early 20th century, breastfeeding started to be viewed negatively, especially in Canada and the United States, where it was regarded as a low class and uncultured practice.
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Common childhood diseases included measles, diphtheria and whooping-cough, while parasites were also common. In Lowland noble and wealthy society by the fifteenth century the practice of wet-nursing had become common. In Highland society there was a system of fosterage among clan leaders, where boys and girls would leave their parent's house to be brought up in that of other chiefs, creating a fictive bond of kinship that helped cement alliances and mutual bonds of obligation.A. Cathcart, Kinship and Clientage: Highland Clanship, 1451–1609 (Brill, 2006), , pp. 81–2.
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Race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status affect choice and duration in the United States. A 2011 study found that on average, US women who breastfed had higher levels of education, were older and were more likely to be white. The rates of breastfeeding in the African-American community remain much lower than any other race, for a variety of proposed reasons. These include the legacy of Wet nursing during slavery, higher rates of poor perinatal health, higher stress levels, less access to support, and less flexibility in the workplace.
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Wet nurses were a normal part of the social order, though social attitudes to wet nursing varied, as well as to the social status of the wet nurse. Breastfeeding itself began to be seen as common; too common to be done by royalty, even in ancient societies, and wet nurses were employed to breastfeed the children of royal families. This attitude extended over time, particularly in western Europe, where babies of noble women were often nursed by wet nurses. Lower-class women breastfed their infants and used a wet nurse only if they were unable to feed their own infant.
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Common childhood diseases included measles, diphtheria and whooping-cough, while parasites were also common. The most badly affected individuals rarely made it beyond the age of 25, thus many individuals in Scottish urban society were affected by childhood disease and accidents that significantly affected their life chances.R. D. Oran, "Disease, death and the hereafter in medieval Scotland", in E. J. Cowan and L. Henderson, eds, A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland: 1000 to 1600 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), , pp. 198–200. In Lowland noble and wealthy society by the fifteenth century the practice of wet-nursing had become common.
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Poor women, especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up temporarily to a wet nurse, or permanently to another family. The woman herself might in turn become wet nurse to a wealthier family, while using part of her wages to pay her own child's wet nurse. From Roman times and into the present day, philosophers and thinkers alike have held the view that the important emotional bond between mother and child is threatened by the presence of a wet nurse.O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1273.
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A Cuban woman using a goat to suckle a baby, 1903 Human–animal breastfeeding has been practiced in many different cultures in many time periods. The practice of breastfeeding or suckling between humans and other species has gone in both directions: women sometimes breastfeed young animals, and animals are used to suckle babies and children. Animals were used as substitute wet nurses for infants, particularly after the rise of syphilis increased the health risks of wet nursing. Goats and donkeys were widely used to feed abandoned babies in foundling hospitals in 18th- and 19th-century Europe.
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Paula S. Fass (ed.), "Wet Nursing", Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (2004): 884–887. In 1874, the French government introduced the Roussel Law, 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 often hired to work in hospitals so that they could nurse premature babies, babies who were ill, or babies who had been abandoned. During the 18th and 19th centuries, congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality in France.
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In the countryside they were represented in wet-nursing, housekeeping, domestics, cowboys, animal herding, etc. After Indians became scarce as labor force on haciendas, the people of color gained a title of yanakuna, hitherto assigned only to indigenous servants with full right to own a piece of land and a day to work on it.Brockington, Lolita, "The African Diaspora in the Eastern Andes: Adaptation, Agency, and Fugitive Action, 1573-1677," The Americas, 57(2), 2000, p. 212 Afro-Peruvians often exercised agency by using huido (translated as escape, flight) from haciendas and changing masters on their own initiative or joining the cimarrones (armed gangs of runaway slaves that formed small communities in the wilderness and raided travel merchants).
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In contemporary affluent Western societies such as the United States, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural discomfort. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is expressed milk (or especially colostrum) which is donated to milk banks, analogous to blood banks, and processed there by being screened, pasteurized, and usually frozen. Infant formula is also widely available, which its makers claim can be a reliable source of infant nutrition when prepared properly. Dr Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet-nurses are cultural: In addition, the legacy of wet- nursing for African-American women is inherently linked to slavery, and the physical, emotional, and mental abuse that enslaved African-American women endured.
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A highly conjectural drawing of the Columna Lactaria The Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") was a landmark in ancient Rome in the Forum Holitorium, or produce market. The Roman grammarian Festus says it was so called "because they would bring babies there to be fed with milk."Infantes lacte alendos deferebant: Paulus ex Festo 105 in the edition of Lindsay = Müller (88) p. 118, as cited by Mary Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal: Natural History Book 7 (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 314 online; Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 94 online. It seems to have been a public charity where poor parents could obtain milk for their infants,Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal, p. 314. or a central site for locating and hiring wet nurses.Suzanne Dixon, Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001), p. 62 online; Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Cornell University Press, 1986), p.
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