Understanding Ellen White

Statement 11: Choosing a wet nurse

Consistent with modern thinking, Ellen White recommended that mothers breast-feed in preference to bottle feeding⁷¹ She urged that mothers nurse their own children and not give them over to a “stranger” for the sake of “fashion” and ballroom “pleasure.” As a part of her argument she warned that a wet nurse “imparts her temper and her temperament to the nursing child. The child’s life is linked to hers. If the hireling is a coarse type of woman, passionate, and unreasonable; if she is not careful in her morals, the nursling will be, in all probability, of the same, or a similar type. The same coarse quality of blood, coursing in the veins of the hireling nurse, is in that of the child.” ⁷² UEGW 190.2

The main idea here is that mothers should nurse their own children whenever possible. She adds a popular scientific idea of her day that the quality of the wet nurse’s milk is affected by her temperament and character. She uses this nineteenth-century idea to strengthen her main point that mothers should nurse their own children. Future scientific study may yet show that there is a link between a woman’s milk and the psychological development of her child. UEGW 190.3