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.
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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]
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]
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.
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)
The Islamic prophet Muhammad was wet-nursed by Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb. Islamic law or sharia specifies a permanent family-like relationship (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.
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 her novel 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 no longer considered necessary in developed nations and, therefore, are no longer common.
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. 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]
Wet-nursing is a prominent theme throughout human mythology and fiction. Some include: