Wet nursing refers to the practice of giving a small baby to a lactating woman who is not its mother so that it can be breastfed. While largely replaced in the modern world by the use of formula, wet nursing was common pretty much everywhere until relatively recently. Unfortunately, in many societies, it was considered a low-status job, and very little research on the impact of wet nurses on childhood development has been carried out, while lower levels of literacy among this cohort means that few personal testimonies have been left in written form.
But contracting parents often had strong opinions about their wet nurses. Wet nurses were generally fed a nutritious diet so that they could provide their charges with healthy milk. For women who were mostly from poor backgrounds, this was one of the perks of the job. Parents were also often anxious about the ‘morals’ of wet nurses, as the perception that an infant might imbibe or somehow absorb moral laxity along with the milk was rather common.
Strangely, not much attention has been given to the matter of language. In many countries – Italy and Spain are good examples, but there are also lots of others – the mother tongue of wet nurses was different from that of the contracting parents. They often spoke a regional language or dialect, and didn’t know the language of the wealthier classes very well, if at all. In the nursery, or wherever they fed the baby, they would mostly have spoken – to the baby or to other servants – in their mother tongue, thus exposing the infant’s developing brain to different words, speech patterns and intonations.
Did wet nurses have a significant impact on the language development of the children they fed? We haven’t been able to locate any research on the topic, and would love to know if this fascinating area has indeed been studied.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/person-carrying-baby-on-arms-Xg_LGdZVPe0?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash
