A Historical Survey Of The Wet Nurse Groups In Shanghai From1920s To1930s

The wet nurse are the lactating women that are employed to feed other children with milk. It is important career for the traditional women to make a living. In the end of Qing Dynasty, to be the wet nurse in the city is the one of important way for women in rural families to resist natural disasters, and obtain cash income from the city.However,from the1920s to1930s, due to the introduction of modern urbanization and Western civilization, the wet nurse from the countryside to the city is facing obstacles and challenges that never encountered:on the one hand, due to the different purposes, the child-care experts, physicians, and dairy businessmen convey the alien image "the sick wet nurse" to the public. The State and society build the entirely new parenting knowledge system based on Western medicine with the public media and public opinion space. The health shortcut of the milk replacer feeding is more suitable to promote the Soviet collectivization-feeding mode which is respected by elite.On the other hand, because activists advocate violent social revolution, there is the new literature image, the "the young suffering mother" in the areas of literature. These images of the traditional nurse provide strong evidences to inspire the public sympathy and national critique. In the many demands,which is to build the powerful country,save the foundation, break the tradition of "feudal",embrace democracy Science, seek mode of the new regime, the wet nurse,the traditional women career, is suffered from all sides questioned in Shanghai in the twenties and thirties and has the various career crisis. In1949,due to the emergence of a strong regime of the Chinese Communist Party, it is beginning to implement the strict household registration system, limit the flow of population between urban and rural areas, cut off the traditional root of city that is relying on rural development and completely cut off the way for the wet nurse form rural to urban area. These indicate that the group of wet nurse is thoroughly declining in Shanghai.