DOES IT HAPPEN THAT A WOMAN DOES NOT BREASTFEED A CHILD BY HERSELF? THEN WHO IS BREASTFEEDING A CHILD? ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNTS FROM THE ZBORNIK ZA NARODNI ŽIVOT I OBIČAJE JUŽNIH SLAVENA (JOURNAL OF FOLK LIFE AND TRADITIONS OF SOUTH SLAVS)

Abstract

Based on a reading of the ethnographic accounts that were written in accordance with the Osnova za sabiranje i proučavanje građe o narodnom životu (Foundations for Collecting and Studying Materials about Folk Life) published in 1897, this paper attempts to outline some of the features of wet-nursing as specific breastfeeding related practices in rural areas at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Ethnographic accounts published in the Zbornik za narodni život i običaje južnih Slavena ( Journal of Folk Life and Traditions of South Slavs) that are, with some retrospective insights, mainly focused on what were then contemporary practices, are approached in this paper as sources of the ethnology and the history of everyday life. Through connecting passages on breastfeeding and also passages that refer indirectly to breastfeeding, this paper underlines the importance of differentiation between the practices of regular wet-nursing (caused by a mother’s illness or her problems with breastfeeding) and occasional wet-nursing (because of a mother’s temporary, short-term absence). This paper also deals with the issue of (material) compensation for wet-nursing and, connected to this, with the relation between women’s efforts to earn an income on the one hand and women’s solidarity on the other. It also deals with the issue of the professionalization of wet-nursing that is not covered in the questions from Osnova (Foundations for Collecting and Studying Materials about Folk Life) and is only indicated in ethnographic accounts from the Zbornik (Journal of Folk Life and Traditions of South Slavs).