The Career of the Wet Nurse

A "wet nurse" is a woman hired to breastfeed a baby when the baby's own mother is unable or unwilling to do so. The mother may have died in childbirth, or the mother may be a wealthy woman who does not want to be bothered with the act of breastfeeding. Disease could also prevent a mother from lactating sufficiently.

The illustration is from the 15th century Danse macabre des femmes ("Dance of death for women"). This shows death threatening a wet nurse that the baby she holds will die. She replies that she would like to go dancing but cannot because of the swelling she feels that must be dealt with by feeding the child and that "sudden death would be a pity."

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all agreed that breastfeeding was important and demanding work. If a Jewish mother did not want to breastfeed, it was her husband's obligation to find an appropriate substitute. Medieval Islamic law considered nursing and raising the youngest children as a job worthy of a salary if a mother had to do the work after the death of the child's father. Contracts for wet nurses could last from one to nine months.

The practice began long before the Middle Ages. In Rome a wet nurse was a nutrix, "nurturer," and wet nurse was a profession. Rome had a landmark called the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") where (the Roman grammarian Festus wrote) people could bring babies to be nursed. It was either a place where wet nurses could be hired, or a public charity where lactating women shared their milk, or perhaps both.

Breast milk was understood to be vital to the proper development and health of a baby, and so medieval parents would choose their wet nurse carefully, researching the health and moral standing of the candidate.  The wet nurse could be the major influence on the child for its first couple years at least—and might be employed as a nanny later, as with the mother of Alexander Neckham, Hodierna, who was wet nurse to Richard I.

After the Black Death of the mid-14th century, as prices for goods and services rose because of the scarcity of laborers, wet nurses were increasingly slaves put into the role whether they wished it or not.

The breast feeding of royal children, however, was a different case. Let's talk about the care and feeding of princes tomorrow.