A poem praising the wet nurse's spirit

Looking at the historical dramas of ancient costumes popular in recent years, in the royal family or the official family, wet nurses have become an indispensable member of these upper-class families. The wet nurses gave birth to children for these upper-class families with their own milk. Fortunately, the main family will also have a wet nurse. In many documents of our country, for the ancient society? Nurse class? There are also many records, such as 16 wet nurse unearthed from noble tombs in the northern Wei dynasty; Zhang Xuan, a famous painter in the Tang Dynasty, painted a picture of a wet nurse holding a baby, which shows the image of a wet nurse in the Tang Dynasty. But women in ancient times could breastfeed themselves, so why did the government invite a wet nurse? Can't they feed themselves?

First of all, the reason why these families care about nursing mothers and breastfeed their babies is inferred from the perspective of modern medicine. It is because there were indeed some women in ancient times who could not provide their babies with enough milk because there was little or no milk. In this case, hiring a nurse can still solve this problem well. For example, in modern society, some people with less breast milk will also use milk powder instead of breast milk to feed their babies. It can also be inferred that the reason why many women don't breast-feed their babies themselves is not that they don't breast-feed on purpose, but that they don't have the ability to breast-feed.

Secondly, breast-feeding a baby is a very hard and troublesome thing. Traditional medicine in China generally believes that milk is blood-born. Because of this, most delicate upper-class women are reluctant to breast-feed their babies themselves. Some books on obstetrics and gynecology in ancient traditional medicine record: Life sucks, and blood dries up? If breast-feeding children, it will damage the mental health of mothers; In addition, it is generally difficult for women who breastfeed their babies to get pregnant. However, these upper-class bureaucratic families need women to have more children for them to maintain the prosperity of the whole family. It is precisely because of this that many bureaucratic families will hire wet nurses.

Moreover, hiring a wet nurse can provide more abundant milk for children. In the ancient society with backward medical technology and imperfect healthy diet, cultivating a strong child is the most anticipated thing for these upper-class families. Chen, a famous gynecologist in the Song Dynasty, recorded in his medical works that the scholar-officials in the Song Dynasty must be women who are cheerful, cheerful, muscular and disease-free, and can produce a lot of high-quality milk to feed their babies.

Because in the eyes of the literati in the Song Dynasty, only the children raised by fat mothers could be healthier. On the other hand, most of the upper-class women in the Song Dynasty were slender and petite, and their bodies did not have the preconditions for raising strong children, so upper-class families would inevitably hire wet nurses for their babies.

Finally, with the development of commodity economy in ancient society, hiring a wet nurse can show the identity of an official's family, and can also play an auxiliary education role for children. The reason why those bureaucratic families employ wet nurses is actually a class symbol that the nobility is different from the civilians. If you are just an ordinary person, you won't spend a lot of money on a wet nurse, because your financial ability doesn't allow it.

In these wealthy families, the wet nurses they hired for their children should not only bear the responsibility of breastfeeding, but also play an auxiliary education role for their children, such as Dou Shi, the wet nurse of Xuanzong in the Tang Dynasty. Cihui Heshun, officiating at the ceremony? Was it given by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty? Teacher? . It can be seen that the role of hiring a wet nurse for the official family is irreplaceable by the mother who gave birth to the child.

Of course, there is another reason that cannot be ignored: in bureaucratic families, especially powerful families, powerful husbands often have more than one wife. If a wife who gives birth to a child breast-feeds her own, she will not only be very busy and tired, but also lose the opportunity to please her husband and get love, which will inevitably be used by competitors and other wives, which is obviously extremely unfavorable to their position in the family.

Therefore, once the wives of these dignitaries give birth to their children, they will immediately throw them to the wet nurse to raise them, regardless of whether they are born or not, and put all their energy into fixation and struggle. This is also an important reason why many powerful families, including the royal family, have no feelings for their parents and children, and adult children do not hesitate to kill their mothers, because they have no feelings except the grace of childbirth.