A Social History of Wet Nursing in America
From Breast to Bottle

This book examines wet nursing in America from the colonial period to the twentieth century.

Janet Golden (Author)

9780521495448, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 February 1996

234 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.7 cm, 0.451 kg

"One of the more interesting chapters in human history is that of the feeding of infants by breast or bottle [and] Golden has gone a long way in explaining this necessary aspect of human behavior in this well-written and fascinating book." Ray Browne, Journal of American Culture

A Social History of Wet Nursing in the United States: From Breast to Bottle examines the intersection of medical science, social theory and cultural practices as they shaped relations among wet nurses, physicians and families from the colonial period through the twentieth century. It explores how Americans used wet nursing to solve infant feeding problems, shows why wet nursing became controversial as motherhood slowly became medicalised, and elaborates how the development of scientific infant feeding eliminated wet nursing by the beginning of the twentieth century. Janet Golden's study contributes to our understanding of the cultural authority of medical science, the role of physicians in shaping child rearing practices, the social construction of motherhood, and the profound dilemmas of class and culture that played out in the private space of the nursery.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Public discourse and private relations: wet nursing in Colonial America
2. The new motherhood and the new view of wet nurses, 1780–1865
3. Finding 'just the right kind of woman': the urban wet nurse marketplace, 1830–1900
4. 'Victims of distressing circumstances': the wet nurse labor force and the offspring of wet nurses, 1860–1910
5. Medical oversight and medical dilemmas: the physician and the wet nurse, 1870–1910
6. 'Obliged to have wet nurses': relations in the private household, 1870–1925
7. 'Therapeutic merchandise': human milk in the twentieth century
Epilogue. From commodity to gift.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]