Read more
A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: 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 in the eighteenth century, shows why wet nursing became controversial in the nineteenth century as motherhood slowly became medicalized, and elaborates how the development of scientific infant feeding eliminated wet nursing by the beginning of the twentieth century. Setting these changes in the context of women's history and the history of medicine, the book makes a significant contribution 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.
List of contents
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.
Summary
Combining women's history and the history of medicine, this book charts the history of wet nursing in America from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. It portrays changes in medical practice, social welfare, childrearing, and motherhood that caused wet nursing's decline.
