Wet Nursing in the Geography of Ottoman Empire and Culture

Abstract

In today's society, the perception of women's identity still highlights children as an important criterion. After a child was born, breast-feeding the child is the most important expectation from a mother. Although the importance of breast-feeding for a child is beyond doubt, it is observed that, at certain periods of history, wet nurses were employed sometimes indispensably and sometimes arbitrarily. When hiring a wet nurse, certain qualifications were sought; not every woman with milk could be a wet nurse. One of the considerations about wet nursing in the present study is to try to approach the matter critically in view of wet nurses' own children because sometimes they were not always able to take their own children with them. This situation caused such children to remain away from their mothers or to be delivered to other wet nurses. It is one of the facts identified, however, that although wet nursing involved certain problems, it still had positive influences on the feeding and health of infants. The present study assessed and evaluated wet nursing in the Ottomans and in different cultures from all aspects primarily based on first-hand sources about it.