The Not-So-Good Old Days

Back in the early 2000s when I was having my children, I read a lot of literature online and in print on feeding babies. There’s a lot out there and it can get quite heated. At the time, there was a huge push to convince every mother that formula was evil and breastfeeding was magical. Proponents pointed out that in the olden days when a mother died or couldn’t feed her infant, the other women in the village would helpfully step in and breastfeed (wet-nurse) the child for her.

It paints a rosy picture, but sadly, as with many things in life, it wasn’t always rosy. Wet-nursing in France was very prevalent for a couple of centuries, and was a way for poor women to earn a little money.

What follows is one of many examples from my family tree.

Catherine Levavasseur, my 9th great-grandmother, married François Tuillier on 25 November 1681 in Vatteville, Eure, France. They had at least ten children together in nearby Daubeuf-Près-Vatteville, with at least six surviving to adulthood.

The local parish register is only going to record the deaths of “nourissons” – the babies being nursed – so we don’t know how many babies she fed over the years. Most of the wet-nursed babies in this region (Normandy) were from Paris, and that’s where their births were recorded. Here is a snapshot of six months when Catherine was probably in her late 30s.

2 April 1697	Burial of François Boursy, 17 months, nursling from Paris1
7 April 1697	Birth of her son Nicolas2	Her 7th child – 4 or 5 older children are still living
10 August 1697	Burial of her son Nicolas3
22 September 1697	Burial of Antoine Flegé, 12 days old, nursling from Paris4

So while heavily pregnant, the Parisian child that she is nursing dies. We can’t know how attached she was to the child, but at the very least, his death is a financial loss. She gives birth five days later, but Nicolas only lives four months. One month later, she travels to Paris to pick up another child to nurse, but he only lives 12 days.

What a hard life! How lucky we are today to have access to safe infant formula.

For more information on the fascinating history of wet-nursing in France, see these JSTOR articles: The Wet-Nurse in France in the Eighteenth Century and Parisian Infants and Norman Wet-Nurses in the Early Nineteenth Century: A Statistical Study.