My friend Paul Quay (S.J.) taught at Loyola University in Chicago, and he introduced me to his friend, Herbert Ratner M.D., through a subscription to Ratner’s journal, Child and Family Quarterly. Ratner’s life and work are notable in many ways (vaccination, informed consent, La Leche League, etc.), and I encourage readers to find out more about this man and his wife, Dorothy. Fellow med school students, Herbert and Dorothy married and Dorothy gave up her medical practice for motherhood. Over the decades, the Ratners had a profound influence on many couples, opening their home Friday nights for younger couples to come over for help and encouragement in their marriages, fatherhood, and motherhood.
The following essay by Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor of Holy Living and Holy Dying fame first came to my attention when Dr. Ratner ran it in his journal. Having mentioned it publicly a number of times, today I decided to clean up the text and publish it as a help to mothers struggling with the heavy demands motherhood requires; and specifically, the demands they face nursing their little ones.
Some of the essay is tough slogging, but be patient. There are nuggets of gold even in the most orotund of these paragraphs. At least the essay starts out with a bang. Read on and may you be strengthened in the godly work God has blessed you by.
Our Lord sees our faithful service when others don’t, and He is pleased to save you through this holy calling: “But women will be saved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint” (1Timothy 2:15).
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Of nursing children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-mother
by Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
8. Upon these propositions I shall infer, by way of instance, that it is a duty that women should nurse their own children. For first, it is taught to women by that instinct which nature hath implanted in them. For, as Phavorinus (fn) the philosopher discoursed, it is but to be half a mother to bring forth children, and not to nourish them; and it is some kind of abortion, or an exposing of the infant, which in the reputation of all wise nations is infamous and uncharitable. And if the name of mother be an appellative of affection and endearments, why should the mother be willing to divide it with a stranger? The earth is the mother of us all, not only because we were made of her red clay, but chiefly that she daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts; and plants and beasts give nourishment to their offsprings, after their production, with greater tenderness than they bare them in their wombs: and yet women give nourishment to the embryo, which whether it be deformed or perfect they know not, and cannot love what they never saw; and yet when they do see it, when they have rejoiced that a child is born and forgotten the sorrows of production, they, who then can first begin to love it, if they begin to divorce the infant from the mother, the object from the affection, cut off the opportunities and occasions of their charitv or piety.
9. For why hath nature given to women two exuberant fontinels, which, “like two roes that are twins, feed among the lilies (Canticles 4:5)” and drop milk like dew from Hermon, and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses where the infant dwelt at first up to the breast where naturally now the child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces (fn)”; but that nature, having removed the babe, and carried its meat after it, intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution, and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion? If nature intended them not for nourishment, I am sure it less intended them for pride and wantonness; they are needless excrescences and vices of nature, unless employed in nature’s work and proper intendment. And if it be a matter of consideration of what blood children are derived, we may also consider that the derivation continues after the birth; and therefore, abating the sensuality, the nurse is as much the mother as she that brought it forth; and so much the more, as there is a longer communication of constituent nourishment (for so are the first emanations) in this than in the other; so that here is first the instinct or prime intendment of nature.
10. Secondly: And that this instinct may also become humane and reasonable, we see it by experience in many places that foster-children are dearer to the nurse than to the mother, as receiving and ministering respectively perpetual prettinesses of love, and fondness, and trouble, and need, and invitations, and all the instruments of endearment; besides a vicinity of dispositions and relative tempers by the communication of blood and spirits from the nurse to the suckling, which makes use the more natural and nature more accustomed. And therefore the affections which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers have no grounds of nature or assiduity, but civility and opinion (fn); and that little of love which is abated from the foster-parents upon public report that they are not natural, that little is transferred to mothers upon the same opinion, and no more. Hence come those unnatural aversions, those unrelenting dispositions, those carelessnesses and incurious deportments towards their children, which are such ill-sown seeds from whence may arise up a bitterness of disposition and mutual provocation. The affection which children bear to their nurses was highly remarked in the instance of Scipio Asiaticus, who rejected the importunity of his brother Africanus in behalf of the ten captains who were condemned for offering violence to the vestals, but pardoned them at the request of his foster-sister: and being asked why he did more for his nurse’s daughter than for his own mother’s son, gave this answer, “I esteem her rather to be my mother that brought me up than her that bare me and forsook me.” And I have read the observation, that many tyrants have killed their mothers, but never any did violence to his nurse; as if they were desirous to suck the blood of their mother raw, which she refused to give to them digested into milk. And the bastard-brother of the Gracchi, returning from his victories in Asia to Rome, presented His mother with a jewel of silver, and his nurse with a girdle of gold, upon the same account. Sometimes children are exchanged, and artificial bastardies introduced into a family, and the right heir supplanted. It happened so to Artabanus, king of Epirus. His child was changed at nurse, and the son of a mean knight succeeded in the kingdom; the event of which was this: the nurse too late discovered the treason; a bloody war was commenced; both the pretenders slain in battle; and the kingdom itself was usurped by Alexander, the brother to Olympias, the wife of Philip the Macedonian. At the best, though there happen no such extravagant and rare accidents, yet it is not likely a stranger should love the child better than the mother; and if the mother’s care could suffer it to be exposed, a stranger’s care may suffer it to be neglected. For how shall a hireling endure the inconveniences, the tediousnesses, and unhandsomenesses of a nursery, when she, whose natural affection might have made it pleasant, out of wantonness or softness hath declined the burden? But the sad accidents which, by too frequent observation, are daily seen happening to nurse-children, give great probation that this intendment of nature, designing mothers to be the nurses, that their affection might secure and increase their care, and the care best provide for their babes, is most reasonable and proportionable to the discourses of humanity.
11. But as this instinct was made reasonable, so in this also the reason is in order to grace and spiritual effects; and therefore is among those things which God hath separated from the common instincts of nature, and made properly to be laws by the mixtures of justice and charity. For it is part of that education which mothers as a duty owe to their children, that they do in all circumstances, and with all their powers which God to that purpose gave them, promote their capacities and improve their faculties (fn). Now in this also, as the temper of the body is considerable in order to the inclinations of the soul, so is the nurse in order to the temper of the body; and a lamb sucking a goat, or a kid sucking an ewe, change their fleece and hair respectively, say naturalists. For if the soul of man were put into the body of a mole it could not see nor speak, because it is not fitted with an instrument apt and organical to the faculty; and when the soul hath its proper instruments, its music is pleasant or harsh, according to the sweetness or the unevenness of the string it touches: for David himself could not have charmed Saul’s melancholic spirit with the strings of his bow or the wood of his spear. And just so are the actions or dispositions of the soul angry or pleasant, lustful or cold, querulous or passionate, according as the body is disposed by the various intermixtures of natural qualities. And as the carelessness of nurses hath sometimes returned children to their parents crooked, consumptive, half starved, and unclean, from the impurities of nature; so their society and their nourishment together have disposed them to peevishness, to lust, to drunkenness, to pride, to low and base demeanours, to stubbornness. And as a man would have been unwilling to have had a child by Harpaste, Seneca’s wife’s fool; so he would in all reason be as unwilling to have had her to be the nurse: for very often mothers by the birth do not transmit their imperfections, yet it seldom happens but the nurse does: which is the more considerable, because nurses are commonly persons of no great rank, certainly lower than the mother and by consequence liker to return their children with the lower and more servile conditions; and commonly those vainer people teach them to be peevish and proud, to lie, or at least seldom give them any first principles contrariant to the nurse’s vice. And therefore it concerns the parent’s
care, in order to a virtuous life of the child, to secure its first seasonings; because whatever it sucks in first it swallows and believes infinitely, and practises easily, and continues longest. And this is more proper for a mother’s care (fn); while the nurse thinks that giving the child suck and keeping its body clean is all her duty, but the mother cannot think herself so easily discharged. And this consideration is material in all cases, be the choice of the nurse never so prudent and curious; and it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of her care to give it spiritual milk, and therefore it intrenches very much upon impiety and positive relinquishing the education of their children when mothers expose the spirit of the child either to its own weaker inclinations, or the wicked principles of an ungodly nurse, or the carelessness of any less obliged person.
12. And then let me add, that a child sucks the nurse’s milk, and digests her conditions, if they be never so bad, but seldom gets any good. For virtue being superaddition to nature, and perfections not radical in the body, but contradictions to and meliorations of natural indispositions, does not easily convey itself by ministrations of food, as vice does; which in most instances is nothing but mere nature grown to custom, and not mended by grace : so that it is probable enough such natural distemperatures may pass in the rivulets of milk, like evil spirits in a white garment, when virtues are of harder purchase, and dwell so low in the heart that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation. And therefore let no mother venture her child upon a stranger, whose heart she less knows than her own. And because few of those nicer women think better of others than themselves (since out of self love they neglect their own bowels), it is but an act of improvidence to let my child derive imperfections from one of whom I have not so good an opinion as of myself.
13. And if those many blessings and holy prayers which the child needs, or his askings or sicknesses or the mother’s fears or joys, respectively do occasion, should not be cast into this account; yet those principles which, in all cases wherein the neglect is vicious, are the causes of the exposing of the child, are extremely against the piety and charity of Christian religion, which prescribes severity and austere deportment, and the labours of love, and exemplar tenderness of affections, and piety to children, which are the most natural and nearest relations the parents have. That religion which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers, and wash the feet of the poor, and dress their ulcers, and sends us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons, and bids us lay down our lives for one another, is not pleased with a niceness and sensual curiosity (that I may not name the wantonnesses of lusts) which denies suck to our own children. “What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity? and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the expresses of a mother’s affection? which certainly to good women is the greatest trouble in the world and the greatest violence to their desires if they should not express and minister.
14. And it would be considered whether those mothers who have neglected their first duties of piety and charity, can expect so prompt and easy returns of duty and piety from their children, whose best foundation is love, and that love strongest which is most natural, and that most natural which is conveyed by the first ministries and impresses of nourishment and education. And if love descends more strongly than it ascends, and commonly falls from the parents upon the children in cataracts, and returns back again up to the parents but in gentle dews; if the child’s affection keeps the same proportions towards such unkind mothers, it will be as little as atoms in the sun, and never express itself but when the mother needs it not; that is, in the sunshine of a clear fortune.
15. This then is amongst those instincts which are natural, heightened first by reason, and then exalted by grace into the obligation of a law ; and being amongst the sanctions of nature, its prevarication is a crime very near those sins which divines, in detestation of their malignity, call sins against nature, and is never to be excused but in cases of necessity (fn) or greater charity; as when the mother cannot be a nurse by reason of natural disability, or is afflicted with a disease which might be transmitted in the milk; or in case of the public necessities of a kingdom, for the securing of succession in the royal family. And yet concerning this last, Lycurgus made a law that the noblest amongst the Spartan women, though their kings’ wives, should at least nurse their eldest son, and the plebeians should nurse all theirs; and Plutarch reports that the second son of king Themistes inherited the kingdom in Sparta only because he was nursed with his mother’s milk, and the eldest was therefore rejected because a stranger was his nurse. And that queens have suckled and nursed their own children is no very unusual kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder ages, as is to be seen in Herodotus and other historians. I shall only remark one instance out of the Spanish chronicles, which Henry Stephens, in his apology for Herodotus, reports to have heard from thence related by a noble personage, Monsieur Marillac: that a Spanish lady, married into France, nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousy, that having understood the little prince once to have sucked a stranger, she was unquiet till she had forced him to vomit it up again. In other cases the crime lies at their door who enforce neglect upon the other, and is heightened in proportion to the motive of the omission; as if wantonness or pride be the parent of the crime, the issue, besides its natural deformity, hath the excrescences of pride or lust to make it more ugly.
16. To such mothers I propound the example of the holy Virgin: who had the honour to be visited by an angel, yet after the example of the saints in the Old testament, she gave to the holy Jesus drink from those bottles which Himself had filled for His own drinking; and her paps were as surely blessed for giving Him suck as her womb for bearing Him: and reads a lecture of piety and charity, which if we deny to our children, there is then in the world left no argument or relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame. God gives dry breasts, for a curse to some, for an affliction to others; but those that invite it to them by voluntary arts, “love not blessing, therefore shall it be far from them.” And I remember that it was said concerning Annius Minutius the censor, that he thought it a prodigy, and extremely ominous to Rome, that a Roman lady refused to nurse her child, and yet gave suck to a puppy, that her milk might with more safety be dried up with artificial applications. Let none therefore divide the interests of their own children; for she that appeared before Solomon and would have the child divided was not the true mother, and was the more culpable of the two.
The Prayer
O holy and eternal God, Father of the creatures, and King of all the world, who hast imprinted in all the sons of Thy creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their own preservation, and to men hast superadded reason, making those first propensities of nature to be reasonable in order to society and a conversation in communities and bodies politic, and hast, by several laws and revelations, directed our reasons to nearer applications to Thee, and performance of Thy great end, the glory of our Lord and Father; teach me strictly to observe the order of creation and the designs of the creatures, that in my order I may do that service which every creature does in its proper capacity. Lord, let me be as constant in the ways of religion, as the sun in his course; as ready to follow the intimations of Thy Spirit, as little birds are to obey the directions of Thy providence and the conduct of Thy hand. And let me never by evil customs, or vain company, or false persuasions, extinguish those principles of morality and right reason, which Thou hast imprinted in my understanding in my creation and education, and which Thou hast ennobled by the superadditions of Christian institution; that I may live according to the rules of nature in such things which she teaches, modestly, temperately, and affectionately, in all the parts of my natural and political relations; and that I, proceeding from nature to grace, may henceforth go on from grace to glory, the crown of all obedience, prudent and holy walking, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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(Jeremy Taylor, The Whole Works of The Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor in Ten Volumes; Volume II: The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; Part I, Section III; “Considerations upon the birth of our blessed Saviour Jesus;” Discourse I.; “Of nursing children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-mother.” London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850.)
