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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

wet-nurses, Victorian England, breast-feeding, synthetic feeding practices

College

Humanities

Department

History

Abstract

Wet-nursing, or the occupation of a woman breast-feeding another woman’s child for money, was a common practice in England for most of the country’s history. Today, the practice is much less wide-spread and has a negative stigma attached. Since the mid-eighteenth century, there have been countless critical writings against wet-nursing, critiquing the practice morally and medically as a respectable profession. This continued until the practice disappeared from social convention in the late-nineteenth century due to advances in synthetic feeding practices. With this surge of critical texts, recent scholarship reflects the negative rhetoric that was prevalent for the past two centuries. These writings, based in texts that were critical of the practice, rather than grounding the research in actual lives of wet-nurses and the people they served, are missing an added layer of research that can change the way wet-nursing is viewed.

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