Hubbry Logo
logo
Wet nurse
Community hub

Wet nurse

logo
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Contribute something to knowledge base
Hub AI

Wet nurse AI simulator

(@Wet nurse_simulator)

Wet nurse

A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds 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.

A wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed her baby. Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century, wet-nursing could save a 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. 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. There was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own babies had died.

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. 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.

A woman can only act as a wet nurse if she is lactating (producing milk). It was once believed that a wet nurse must have recently undergone childbirth in order to lactate. This is not necessarily the case, as regular breast stimulation can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some women have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump, in order to feed an infant.

Gabrielle Palmer, author of The Politics of Breastfeeding, 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.

See all
woman employed to breastfeed and care for another's child
User Avatar
No comments yet.