Wet nurse

The future King Louis XIV as an infant with his wet nurse

A wet nurse is a woman who is used to breast feed and care for another's child.^[1] Wet nurses are used when the mother is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship. Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in a reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing.

Reasons

A wet nurse can be used if a baby's natural mother is unable or chooses not to breastfeed her infant. Before the development of baby formulas in the 20th century, when a natural mother was unable to breastfeed her baby, the baby's life was put in danger if a wet nurse was not available. There are many reasons why a mother is unable to lactate or to produce sufficient breast milk. Reasons include the serious or chronic illness of the mother and her treatment which creates a temporary difficulty to nursing. Additionally, a mother's taking drugs (prescription or illegal) may necessitate a wet nurse if a drug in any way changes the content of the mother's milk. Some women choose not to breastfeed for social reasons and status.

Wet nurses have also been used when a mother cannot produce sufficient breast milk, i.e. the mother feels incapable of adequately nursing her child, especially following multiple births. Wet nurses tend to be more common in places where the maternal mortality is high.^[2]

Eliciting milk

A woman can only act as a wet-nurse if she is lactating. It was once believed that a wet-nurse must have recently undergone childbirth. This is not necessarily true, as regular breast suckling can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion.^[3] Some adoptive mothers have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump so that they could feed an adopted infant.^[4]

Dr Gabrielle Palmer^[5] states:

There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously (known as 'tandem feeding')... some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies.^[6]

Practice across cultures

The practice of using wet nurses is ancient and common to many cultures. It has been linked to social class, where monarchies, the aristocracy, nobility or upper classes had their children wet-nursed in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly. Lactation inhibits ovulation in some women, thus the practice has a rational basis. Poor women, especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up, temporarily or permanently, to a wet-nurse.

Ancient history

Many cultures feature myths involving superhuman, supernatural, human and in some instances animal wet-nurses. The ancient Romans believed their collective origin to be from Romulus and Remus, who were breast-fed by the she-wolf, Lupa, as seen in the famous Capitoline Wolf. The Romans also believed that a baby who had a Greek wet nurse would grow up speaking Greek as well as Latin.^[7]The Bible refers to Deborah, a nurse to Rebekah wife of Isaac and mother of Israel, who appears to have lived as a member of the household all her days. (Genesis 35:8) Jewish mythology holds that the Egyptian princess Batya (whose place is occupied by Egyptian queen Asiya in Islamic tradition) attempted to wet-nurse Moses, but he would only take his biological mother's milk. (Exodus 2:6-9)

Islamic culture

The Islamic prophet Muhammad was wet-nursed by Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb. Islamic law or sharia specifies a permanent family-like relationships (known as rada) between children nursed by the same woman, i.e., who grew up together as youngsters. They and various specific relatives may not marry, that is, they are deemed mahram.

Renaissance to twentieth century

Wet nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV, the early 17th century. It was commonplace in the British Isles:

For years it was a really good job for a woman. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than her husband could as a laborer. And if you were a royal wet nurse you would be honored for life.^[6]

Jane Austen mentions the practice in Emma. Women took in babies for money in Victorian Britain, and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates. Dr Naomi Baumslag^[8] noted legendary wet-nurse 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 2.3 litres) of breast milk a day."^[6] Wet nurses were common for children of all social ranks in the southern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Steven Pinker speculated that Sigmund Freud's theories about the Oedipal complex were the result of Freud being raised by a wet-nurse, rather than his mother, because this dissociation from his mother would have prevented the Westermarck effect from taking hold.^[9] Wet nursing has sometimes been used with old or sick people who have trouble taking other nutrition. Following the widespread marketing and availability of artificial baby milk, or infant formula, wet nursing went into decline after World War II and fell out of style in the affluence of the mid-1950s. Wet nurses are considered no longer necessary in developed nations and, therefore, are no longer common.

Current attitudes in developed countries

In contemporary affluent Western societies particularly affected by the successful marketing of infant formula, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural squeamishness, notably in the United States and United Kingdom^{[citation needed]}. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is screened, pasteurized, expressed milk (or especially colostrum) donated to milk banks, analogous to blood banks, a sort of bureaucratic wet-nurse. Dr Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet-nurses are cultural:

The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Cultures with breast fetishes tend to conflate the sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast.^[6]

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. Hayek later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breast-feeding a hungry baby in a village.^[10]

Wet-nurses are still common in many developing countries, although the practice poses a risk of infections such as HIV.^[11] In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, a wet-nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy, wealth, and high status. Additionally, a woman who wants to become pregnant may wet-nurse and rear a relative (especially a poorer one's) new-born as a mancing (Javanese language for "lure"). The mythology of Asia is full of such events. Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies, the salaries of wet-nurses there increased dramatically ^[12] The use of a wet-nurse is seen as a status symbol in some parts of modern China.^[11]

Fiction

Wet-nursing is a prominent theme throughout human mythology and fiction, too numerous to list individually. Some include:

• In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet the character Nurse had been Juliet's wet nurse. "Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat." 1.3.72
• In Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, the character Natasha Rostov, after changing wet nurses three times, elected to nurse her children herself despite opposition from her husband, mother, and doctors.^[13]
• In George Moore's novel Esther Waters, the eponymous heroine works as a wet nurse after the birth of her son while leaving him in the hands of a baby farmer.
• In John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, set in a time of great poverty, a woman whose baby has just died, and consequently whose breasts are engorged with milk, wet-nurses a man at the point of death, as no other nourishment is available, a reference to Roman Charity.
• In Kenji Mizoguchi's film The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, a wet nurse by the name of Otuko is dismissed by a prominent actor's family for telling their adoptive son that he needs to practice more in order to become a good actor. This flies in the face of the insincere flattery he is given by those who pay him lip service in order to ingratiate themselves with his father's family. Given the prospect of her dismissal, she unsuccessfully pleads for the sake of the child she nurses who will have separation anxiety as a result of her departure.
• In the movie Spartacus, Crassus captures Spartacus's wife and baby. Since he wants Varinia as a concubine, he purchases a wet nurse for her baby. Varinia rejects his offer, saying, "I sent her away: I prefer to nurse the child myself."
• In Blackadder II, Nursie, the Queen's childhood nurse, is commonly perceived as being a perpetual wet nurse: “In the old days, it was all difficult choices. Should you have Nursie-milk or moo-cow milk? Of course, it was always Nursie milk….”
• In Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley by Linda Berdoll, Elizabeth Darcy hires a wet nurse, Mrs. Littlepage, for her and Darcy's twins. Owing to the multiple birth, Lizzy and Mrs. Littlepage must share the role, much to the consternation of Mrs. Bennet, who finds it unseemly that Lizzy breastfeeds her children.
• In Samia by Menander the woman of the title loses her baby and wet-nurses the result of a one night stand between her partners adopted son and a girl he fancied. She pretends it is her own actually dead child but the truth is revealed when the real mother fills in for the wet nurse and her father sees her.
• In the 2007 action film Shoot 'Em Up, Smith, the main character, rescues a newborn child while trying to save its mother. However, he succeeds in saving the child instead. Seeing as the birth mother is dead, he gets a lactating prostitute, Donna, to temporarily take care of the baby.
• In the 1992 film Indochine after the French capture Jean-Baptiste with his infant son, various local village women nurse the child as they make their way back to Saigon.

See also

• Roman Charity, works of art based on the story of a daughter feeding her dying father.
• Milkmaid
• Mrs. Pack, a wet nurse to the child William, Duke of Gloucester (1689–1700).
• Milk kinship

References

1. ^ [wet nurse, wet-nurse, n. "Wet nurse, wet-nurse, n."]. Oxford English Dictionary. December 1989. wet nurse, wet-nurse, n.. Retrieved November 22, 2009. 
2. ^ Beeton, Mrs Isabella (1861 (1st Edition)). Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. London: S. O. Beeton, 18 Bouverie Street, London EC. pp. 1022–1024. 
3. ^ E. Goljan, Pathology, 2nd ed. Mosby Elsevier, Rapid Review Series.
4. ^ Wilson-Clay, Barbara (1996). "Induced Lactation". The American Surrogacy Center.
5. ^ Lecturer in Human Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and author of The Politics of Breastfeeding
6. ^ ^{a b c d} The Guardian, Viv Groskop: 2007. Not your mother's milk
7. ^ Tames, Richard. Ancient Roman Children. Heineman, 2002, 11Template:Date=February 2010
8. ^ author of Milk, Money and Madness
9. ^ [1]
10. ^ Gerstein, Julie (2009-02-11). "Salma Hayek Breast-feeds Hungry African Babe". LemonDrop. AOL. http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/02/10/salma-hayek-breast-feeds-a-hungry-african-babe/. Retrieved 2009-02-11. 
11. ^ ^{a b} Guardian article
12. ^ [2] Wall Street Journal "Got Milk? Chinese Crisis Creates A Market for Human Alternatives" 24 Sept 2008
13. ^ Tolstoy, Leo; translated by Peaver, Richard and Larissa Volkhonsky (2007). War and Peace. Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 1157 (Epiloge, Part One, chapter X).