Understanding Ellen White

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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