The Pleasures and Pains of Breastfeeding in England c.1600–c.1800

Abstract

It is commonly observed that between the early seventeenth and later eighteenth centuries, wealthier families turned against the employment of country wet nurses, in favour of maternal breastfeeding, or the employment of strictly supervised nurses within the family home. Shepard argues that in the earlier period wet nurses were often portrayed as surrogate mothers: loving the children in their care, among whom their own children figured. Later, wet nurses were more likely to be portrayed as feckless and unreliable, needing to be carefully selected and vigilantly watched. The potential emotional gain to mothers was now stressed so that, as mothers’ work was naturalized, the work of the nurse was dehumanized. This does not tell us about actual personal but does illuminate the repositioning of imagined experience.