Feeding the Roman nursling: maternal milk, its substitutes, and their limitations

Feeding the Roman nursling: maternal milk, its substitutes, and their limitations

Abstract

This paper investigates what substitutes for maternal milk existed for Roman infants whose mothers were not able or not willing to breastfeed. It examines the potential reasons why a mother could or would not breastfeed or why an infant could not suckle, and the various attested or hypothetical alternatives to maternal milk about which literary and archaeological sources as well as anthropological, sociological and practical considerations inform us, from wet nurses to animal milk, from a bottle or from the udder, to allomaternal nursing

Keywords

• Ancient History
• Roman History
• Women's History
• Women in the ancient world
• History of Childhood
• Roman social history
• Maternal Health
• Maternal and Child Nutrition
• Breastfeeding
• Maternal and Child Health
• Maternal Mortality
• Infant feeding
• gender studies, women in ancient Rome
• Food in ancient Rome
• Infant and Maternal Mortality
• Infant and young child feeding
• Infant Mortality
• Roman Archaeology
• Family In Ancient Rome
• The Ancient Family
• Roman Infancy and Childhood
• Food In the Ancient World
• Cross-feeding
• Cross-Nursing
• Breast Milk Substitute