Milk kinship

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Milk kinship, most commonly known in today's terms as nursing by a non-biological mother, was a form of fostering allegiance with fellow community members. This particular form of kinship did not exclude particular people from participating in its usefulness. Traditionally speaking, this practice predates the Early Modern Era, however it became a widely used mechanism for fostering alliances in many hierarchical societies. Milk kinship used the practice of breast-feeding by a wet nurse to feed a child either from the same community, or a neighbouring one. This wet nurse played a strategic role in forging relations between her family and community as well as with the family (and thus their community) of the child she was expected to nurse.

Contents

[edit] History

Peter Parkes is one of the most notable scholars to write about the practice of milk kinship, especially in regards to Mediterranean, and Eurasian societies in the Early Modern period. He states that milk kinship, though not unique to Islamic societies alone, was widely practiced in the Arab countries for both religious and strategic purposes. There is as much religious significance to milk kinship as there are strategic reasons for it. For the practice of Islam, milk kinship was an important aspect of the women’s practice of modesty, those women of the lower/slave classes were the ones selected to breast feed a more notable member of Islamic society. An example of traditional Arab milk kinship in practice would be the case of the prophet Muhammad. In his early childhood, He was sent away and was nursed by foster-parents who were Bedouin. So in this instance Muhammad not only had his own biological family in Mecca, he also “acquired a duplicate set of Bedouin ‘milk-kin’. This comprised his nurse, or ‘milk-mother’ Halimah, together with her husband- Muhammad’s ‘milk-father’ al-Harith- and their own children, the prophets co-raised ‘milk-brothers’ and ‘milk-sisters’.”[1] This particular case is evidence that if a child was nursed by a ‘milk-mother’, that the child may have also been raised by her. This would have been helpful in many societies where, especially in times of war, if families perished, other members of society would end up co-parenting through the link of milk-kinship. In this case, milk kinship is paralleled to god-parenthood and to co-parenting, through the ‘adoption’ or ‘fostering’ of a non-biological child. The practice of milk kinship is most commonly compared to the Christian practice of co-parenting or godparent-hood. “Milk kinship in Islam thus appears to be a culturally distinctive-but by no means unique-institutional form of adoptive kinship”.[2]

[edit] Strategic Reasons for Milk kinship

“Colactation links two families of unequal status and creates a durable and intimate bond; it removes from ‘clients’ their outsider status but excludes them as marriage partners…it brings about a social relationship that is an alternative to kinship bonds based on blood.[3] People of different races and religions could be brought together strategically through the bonding of the milk mother and their milk ‘children’. Milk kinship was as relevant for peasants as ‘fostering’ or as ‘hosting’ other children, in that it secured the good will from their masters and their wives. Peasant women would most often play the role of the ‘milk’ mother to her non-biological children, and they held an important role in maintaining the connection between herself and the master whose baby she is nursing. It is also important to note that it was also a practical way to assist families who were of a very ill mother or whose mother died in childbirth.

[edit] Conflicting theories/ideas/myths about Milk kinship

One particular theory mentioned by Peter Parkes is an Arab folk-analogy that breast milk is supposed to be “transformed male semen”.[4] There is no evidence that Arabs ever considered a mothers milk to be ‘transformed sperm’.[5] It is also suggested since that milk is of the woman, her moods and dispositions are transferred through the breast milk. These of course, are just theories to justify why people selected particular women over other to breast-feed their child. It is also a fallacy that milk-kinship is only an Islamic tradition. Peter Parkes mentions that milk-kinship was “further endorsed as a canonical impediment to marriage by several eastern Christian churches”.[6] This gives us evidence that this was widely practiced among numerous religious communities, and not just Islamic communities, in the early modern Mediterranean.

[edit] Legal Ramifications (taboos, incest, etc…)

Weisner-Hanks mentions the introduction in the Fifteenth century of prohibitions in the Christian Canon Law in which one is not allowed to marry any one suspected to be of respective kin. Individuals who shared godparents, and great grandparents were prohibited against marrying. The prohibitions against marriage were even extended to that of natural and godparents. This was due to the fact that both natural and ‘foster’ or ‘spiritual’ parents had an investment on the child’s spiritual well being, which would not be achieved by going against Canon Law.[7] The practice of milk kinship is paralleled quite frequently among scholarly works, with that of Christian godparent-hood or spiritual kinship. Parkes states that in both milk kinship and god-or co-parenthood “we deal with a fictitious kinship relationship between people of unequal status that is embedded in a long-term exchange of goods and services that we know as patronage”[8]. Iranians seemed to have “taken care to confine delegated suckling to subordinate non-kin-particularly those with whom marriage would be undesirable in any event”.[9] Marriage Taboos due to milk kinship were taken very seriously since some regarded breast milk to be refined female blood from the womb, thus conveying a ‘uterine substance’ of kinship.[10] Two children from different parents who were suckled by the same woman were prohibited to marry. It was as much of a taboo to marry your milk-brother or sister, as it was to marry a biological brother or sister. It is extremely important to understand that in all cases “What is forbidden by blood kinship is equally forbidden by milk kinship”.[11]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Peter Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam. Substance, Structure, History", Social Anthropology, 13 no.3 (2005), 309
  2. ^ Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam", 308
  3. ^ R. Ensel, "Colactation and fictive kinship as rites of incorporation and reversal in Morocco", Journal of North African Studies,23 (2002), 93
  4. ^ Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam", 308
  5. ^ Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam", 312
  6. ^ Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam", 320
  7. ^ Merry Weisner-Hanks,(2006) Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789, 74.
  8. ^ Parkes, "Milk Kinship in Islam", 322
  9. ^ Parkes, Milk Kinship in Islam, 314
  10. ^ Avner Giladi, "Breast-feeding in Medieval Islamic thought. A preliminary study of legal and medical writings", Journal of Family History23 (1998) 107-23
  11. ^ Avner Giladi, Infants, parents and wet nurses. Medieval Islamic views on Breast-feeding and their social implications ,1999, 71

[edit] Bibliography

Altorki. Soraya. 1980. ‘Milk Kinship in Arab Society: An Unexplored Problem in the Ethnography of Marriage’, Ethnology, 19 (2): 233-244

Ensel, R. 2002. ‘Colactation and fictive kinship as rites of incorporation and reversal in Morocco’, Journal of North African Studies 7: 83-96.

Giladi, A. 1998. ‘Breast-feeding in medieval Islamic thought. A preliminary study of legal and medical writings’, Journal of Family History 23: 107-23.

Giladi. A. 1999. Infants, parents and wet nurses. Medieval Islamic views on Breast-feeding and their social implications. Leiden: Brill.

Parkes, Peter. 2005. ‘Milk Kinship in Islam. Substance, Structure, History’, Social Anthropology 13 (3) 307-329.

Weisner-Hanks, M. 2006. Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 74.

[edit] Further reading

Parkes, Peter. 2004. ‘Fosterage. Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?’, Comparataive Studies in Society and History 46 (3): 587-615