The Imaginary Mothers - Wet Nurses

(This image is a 16th century painting of a wet nurse, and two more elite ladies in the foreground.)

One concept that not too many sources mention when recounting pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood is the aspect of using a wet-nurse and how this affected women of the period. Wiesner-Hanks offers a few pages of information concerning the topic of wet-nursing. She relates that many women of the period nursed their own children and did not use wet nurses. One important thing is the amount of time each child would be nursed. Typically, this lasted two years (WH 91). Women who could not produce milk or could afford it typically had a wet nurse. These women did not get to choose their nurse, rather their husbands chose for them (WH 92). Choosing a wet nurse was a serious process, to find a healthy woman, and one who would impart good moral and psychological qualities on a child through her milk.

Yet on the other end of the class spectrum, communities would hire wet nurses for children of the poor, foundlings and orphans. This meant that even those children left to destitute situations still had a chance at life. It is important to note many of these children died, as did some of the wealthy children left in the care of the wet nurse, due to either neglect or just sheer inattention paid by these women (WH 92). Mostly it was because these women typically came from the lower social classes and offered to care for other children in hopes of earning more money. Women who worked as wet nurses usually formed an attachment to the children they cared for and sometimes went to the home to become domestic servants after the child grew up. This is interesting because for these women the attachments to other people’s children could even be stronger than their attachment to their own children.

Citation:

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008