Dairy brother - who is this? Relative or stranger?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

In ancient times, when stately ladies did not want or were not able to feed their own child, wet nurses appeared. They were portly women, full of he alth, with a large physique. The nurse took care of the noble baby, circled around his cradle at night, breast-fed the child.

Not blood relatives

Modern youth asks the question: "Dollar brother - who is this?" In ancient times, such concepts as "milk brother" and "milk sister" entered the Russian dictionary. Among the huge number of family ties, there are those that have nothing to do with blood ties: godmother, godson, milk mother, milk son … Who is this milk brother?

This was the name of a male child who was breastfed by a woman who was not his own mother. If the nurse had children of her own, they were the baby's milk relatives.

Profession "Nurse"

Milk brothers and sisters were not blood relatives. They might not haveno relationship to the woman who fed babies with her breast milk. If for any reason the child's mother was unable to feed or did not have milk, then she turned to the services of a wet nurse. Some women spent a long time feeding other people's children, as long as their age allowed. A woman could have given birth to her child before or caused lactation artificially. Nipple sucking by a baby caused a rush of breast milk, and even a nulliparous woman could become a nurse.

Milky brother - who is this?

All noble families used the services of a wet nurse, since feeding their own child was unfashionable and obscene for an aristocratic person. If a female breadwinner at different times fed the offspring of different unrelated families, their children were considered dairy. The son of a wet nurse is also considered a foster brother in relation to the other children she feeds.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, institutions of nurses were created on this occasion. Women with their own babies were employed in rich houses, fed someone else's child, and gave their crumbs to foster homes or relatives in the village. If a child grew up safely, then regardless of his poor origin, he was considered a foster brother for a kid from a noble family.

How to understand this? Milk brother in the modern world

In our time, there are situations when mothers do not have enough or no breast milk. Many switch to formula milk, but some women, taking care of their own child, trymaintain lactation by stimulating milk production with medicines, hot drinks, special massages and rubbing. When one mother in the maternity hospital profusely flows out breast milk, and the other slowly expresses one or two drops, the first may offer to feed someone else's child while she is nearby. In the first days of life, the baby needs it.

There are cases when two relatives or girlfriends give birth at the same time. In one of them, breast milk is produced in large quantities, the baby is full, so the rest has to be expressed. Another mother has a different picture: lactation is low, and no methods help to improve the quality and quantity of milk.

The child does not eat, whimpers, does not gain weight, and a compassionate relative or friend decides to feed two babies. She visits the baby every day or takes him at home and feeds him with her breast milk. Some women feed other people's children long enough until the child is old enough to eat porridge and other foods.

The child of a nursing woman, is his foster brother or sister, regardless of whether there is a relationship between them or not. That's who it is - milk brother.

In the old days, a woman who nursed someone else's child was his milk mother, and her children were milk brothers and sisters. The child treated her with respect even as an adult and was grateful all his life.

They say that through breast milk, a woman conveys to the baby the mood,feelings, perception of the world. Eating breast milk, the baby experiences a feeling of security, peace and tenderness. A woman who feeds a baby willy-nilly has tender feelings for him and affectionately calls him "milk daughter" or "milk son", even when the child reaches adulthood.