After giving birth to children, children from poor families can only raise them themselves. In ancient times, many children died young due to the limitations of material and medical conditions. Raising children is a boring and meticulous job. If breast milk is insufficient, it needs careful care. Rich families or royal nobles will find lactating women from poor families to breastfeed their children. Children are prone to crying at night and need to be put to sleep in time. In addition, ancient women looked forward to being in the boudoir. Most of them are delicate, seldom exercise, and their physical fitness is naturally poor, so they can't stand the toss.
In ancient times, regardless of the royal family or the rich, the mortality rate of children was high because of limited medical conditions. In this case, the only way to have more children is to let women have more children. In the past, women who married early and early rarely took care of their children once they gave birth. Small family, mother-in-law's help, women's breast-feeding, lack of milk, rice soup, soup and rice noodles mixed paste feeding.
The profession of wet nurse has a long history. There is a cloud in the Book of Rites: A son of a gentleman has a mother. Since the Ming dynasty, the royal family has also set up a special milk room to provide the best wet nurse for the royal family. Most people always think that women can't get pregnant during lactation. The ancients paid attention to having many children and grandchildren. Giving the child to the wet nurse can make the mother wean as soon as possible and return to the reproductive state, and also save the fatigue of taking care of the child!
The wet nurse was a symbol of family status in ancient times. Just as we modern workers regard owning a car and a house as the standard of success, any family that can afford it is a symbol of wealth.