Manuals written for parents in Christian society suggested weaning girls
about six months before boys, and this seems to have been the practice.^51 In
contrast, almost none of the Jewish sources mentions discrepancies between
the duration of nursing for boys and for girls, whereas some sources emphasize
that both girls and boys should be nursed until age two.^52 It may be, though,
that the souces’ emphasis hints at the more favorable treatment of boys in
practice.
In summary, it seems that the Talmudic directive to breast-feed infants for
twenty-four months was observed in medieval Ashkenaz, at least when moth-
ers nursed their own children. In some cases, children were nursed for even
longer, until age four or five. This duration fits Jewish guidelines and was com-
mon practice in medieval Christian society as well. This practice varied, how-
ever, since often the mothers did not nurse their children themselves and
wet nurses were hired for them. Wet-nursing practices created a new set of
circumstances, since the wet nurse was not a member of the infant’s family,
and her circumstances could change and influence the duration of her em-
ployment. We shall now turn to examine the wet nurse and the details of her
job.
Wet NursesAlthough the care of infants was the responsibility of their mothers, in many
cases, especially in the cities, the mother was assisted by a wet nurse. The wet
nurse’s position in the house varied from place to place and among the differ-
ent social classes, but she was always an employee bound by contract to her
employers. In medieval Jewish society, as in Christian society and according to
the Mishna, the wealthier a woman was, the more likely she was to employ a
wet nurse.^53
Studies of Christian households have outlined the terms by which wet
nurses were contracted. They demonstrate that, although the wet nurse was
usually supervised by the infant’s mother, she was hired by its father. In cases
in which the wet nurse was married, the contract was made between the in-
fant’s father and the wet nurse’s husband.^54 The fact that the responsibility of
hiring the wet nurse was the father’s, despite the female nature of the job, is an
important feature of medieval life and of the control patriarchy exercised over
women in society. This was also the case in Jewish and in Muslim society. This
arrangement accords with the halakhic understanding of the duty of breast-
feeding, as described above. These cultural understandings created social cir-
cumstances in which the infant’s mother worked with the wet nurse on a daily
basis, but usually played little or no role in the formal agreement between the
infant’s family and the wet nurse.^55 From a legal point of view, there were only
two instances in which a woman was responsible for hiring a wet nurse her-