Mothers and Children. Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe - Elisheva Baumgarten

bated at length—it may be that, since contraception was seen as women’s busi-
ness, and that men had an interest in letting them do as they saw fit, they re-
frained from passing legislation. In any case, they may have felt that women
would ignore their rulings.^147 Whatever the case, the few legal authorities who
do discuss the issue permit breast-feeding mothers to use some form of contra-
ception. One opinion, that of R. Tam, one of the most prominent legal au-
thorities of the period, stands out in its decisiveness. R. Tam, took a very firm
position on the question of contraception. He said that a nursing woman must
use some form of contraception, in order to ensure the life of her living child,
who was dependent on her for his/her nourishment.^148
R. Tam allows breast-feeding mothers to use contraception only in severely
restricted circumstances—if it is necessary to protect the life of the nursing in-
fant. This authorization could be applied, however, only in the context of an
intact family. The assumption was also that if an additional pregnancy did
occur during the two years of lactation, the father would care sufficiently about
his existing offspring to ensure his/her well-being (BT Yevamot 42a). The sit-
uation became much stickier when the family was no longer together, whether
as a result of divorce or widowhood.
I have already outlined the legal restrictions concerning the remarriage of
divorcees and widows with children under the age of two. In these cases, the
authorities feared that the mother might neglect the infant out of a desire to
strengthen her relationship with her new partner. The stepfather was not ex-
pected to have any special sentiments toward his stepchildren or to show any
special compassion or concern for their welfare. In addition, the sources sug-
gest that other relatives on the deceased husband’s side, at least in the case of
widows, could not be trusted to look out for the infant’s welfare, since these rel-
atives often had interests connected to inheritance that would be threatened
by the survival of the infant.^149
The authorities’ concern for the infant’s welfare is reflected in the frequency
of cases dealing with widowed or divorced mothers of small infants. These oc-
cupy a prominent position in the discussions concerning breast-feeding. Al-
though there are no statistics concerning the percentage of women who be-
came widows or divorcées before their youngest child reached the age of
twenty-four months, this was not a rare phenomenon. Recent research has
shown that divorce was widespread in medieval Ashkenaz, and that the dan-
gers that travel and disease posed in medieval times caused many women to
become widowed at an early age.^150
When examining the talmudic laws regarding wet nursing, we saw that ac-
cording to Jewish law widows were not supposed to remarry until their youngest
child reached the age of twenty-four months. In the case of divorcées, women
were not officially obligated to nurse their children after their divorce, and, if
they did, their husbands were supposed to pay them for their labors. Although

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