Wet Nurse - Practice Across Cultures - Current Attitudes in Developed Countries

Current Attitudes in Developed Countries

In contemporary affluent Western societies particularly affected by the successful marketing of infant formula, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural squeamishness, notably in the United States and United Kingdom. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is screened, pasteurized, expressed milk (or especially colostrum) donated to milk banks, analogous to blood banks, a sort of bureaucratic wet-nurse. Dr Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet-nurses are cultural:

The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Cultures with breast fetishes tend to conflate the sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast.

The subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill trip to Sierra Leone in 2008, Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breast-feed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than her daughter, who had not yet been weaned. Hayek later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breast-feeding a hungry baby in a village.

Wet-nurses are still common in many developing countries, although the practice poses a risk of infections such as HIV. In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, a wet-nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy, wealth, and high status. Additionally, a woman who wants to become pregnant may wet-nurse and rear a relative (especially a poorer one's) new-born as a mancing (Javanese language for "lure"). The mythology of Asia is full of such events. Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies, the salaries of wet-nurses there increased dramatically. The use of a wet-nurse is seen as a status symbol in some parts of modern China.