Wet nurse, as the name suggests, is the wet nurse, the person who feeds children.
When women from ancient royal families gave birth to children, often had insufficient milk , so women with sufficient milk would be invited from the outside world to help feed the born children.
Qing Dynasty The royal family also had wet nurses, but unlike ordinary wet nurses, the royal wet nurses, their job is not just as simple as breastfeeding. What is the specific job of royal wet nurses?
1. The role of wet nurses
In fact, the main job of royal wet nurses is to feed newborn princes and princesses, but their job is not just to feed them. On the contrary, they have to do more than the princes’ biological mothers.
First of all, the primary job of wet nurses is to feed the prince . In ancient times, those women from wealthy families who were pampered and even the royal concubines were actually lacking in milk.
But on the contrary, the royal prince needs milk feeding more than ordinary children. In the conflict between the two, choosing a wet nurse to feed the prince is the best compromise.
Moreover, although ancient concubines all adhered to the saying that "mother is noble by her son" and all wanted to have a child, in fact, they regarded the child as a tool for favor rather than a piece of meat falling from themselves.
So, even if the concubines have children, they still have to focus on that compete for favor, then they definitely don’t have the time and energy to raise their children.
Otherwise, if you focus your energy on your children, you will not have the energy to serve the emperor.
Not only that, the Qing Dynasty royal family also had a rule: All concubines except the queen could not raise after giving birth, and they should break up the children born by the concubines, and this concubine raised the children born by other concubines.
Just imagine, the concubine is focused on competing for favor with other concubines. Even raising their own children is impossible. How could she do her best to raise the children born by other concubines?
So, The wet nurse is the final executor when raising the prince.
From this we can see that wet nurses are not just breastfeeding people. Their group can even be said to be the de facto mothers of the princes, and the princes are even more affected by them than the princes' biological mothers.
If this matter is amplified, these wet nurses will even affect the future emperors and in turn affect the governance of the country. Therefore, the Qing Dynasty was extremely strict in the selection of wet nurses.
2. Selection of wet nurses in the Qing Dynasty
The selection of wet nurses in the Qing Dynasty was somewhat similar to the selection of wet nurses in the show girl .
First, the grassroots must report the list of women who meet the conditions to the central government , and then the palace will conduct layer by layer selection. It can be said that selecting wet nurses is a huge systematic project. What are the specific conditions for selecting wet nurses?
First of all, a woman must be less than three months after giving birth to her third child. This is to ensure that the wet nurse has sufficient milk. After all, if the milk is not sufficient, the wet nurse cannot have three children.
Second, The wet nurse should have a dignified appearance , a gentle personality, and family members are present. This is not difficult to understand. If the wet nurse is ugly, the prince will cry when he sees it. Then how can the prince eat milk and how can he grow up healthily?
And, if the wet nurse has a bad personality, it will inevitably affect the growth of the prince, which is quite unfavorable to the country.
Finally, wet nurses cannot be affected by the family, This requires that wet nurses have all the family members and the family is harmonious.
Even if the above conditions are met, there will be layers of checkpoints in the future. First of all, in the early Qing Dynasty, the royal family also required that the wet nurses must be bannermen, and even have to know the text of a man.
In the later stage, this condition is gradually relaxed. As long as is a woman with a coat of or above in , she can be a wet nurse. Because in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, even the emperor himself was not very good at Mandarin , so he did not require the wet nurse to speak Mandarin .
Moreover, the Qing emperors had many descendants, such as Kangxi Emperor had dozens of sons, and even countless daughters.
At that time, it was stipulated that a prince or princess would need eight wet nurses to feed . For Kangxi, he needed hundreds of wet nurses who meet the conditions to help feed his children.
However, according to the conditions for selecting wet nurses, if only selected among the bannermen, it is not enough, so the conditions have to be relaxed.
It can be seen from this that wet nurses occupy an important position in the lives of princes. What kind of position does wet nurses occupy in the lives of emperors?
3. The influence of the wet nurse on the emperor in the Qing Dynasty
During the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Chenggong captured Nanjing. At that time, the emperor was furious after hearing the news. smashed his seat with one sword, claiming to be the emperor in person.
His mother, the famous Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang , heard it, and tried hard to persuade the emperor, but she still couldn't change her mind.
After hearing this, the wet nurse came to persuade Emperor Shunzhi. Although the result was not satisfactory, it can be seen that the wet nurse still had an impact on the emperor's governance.
During the Qing Dynasty, wet nurses had a relatively large power. After the princess of the Qing Dynasty got married, the wet nurses had to take care of the princess' daily life, so the princess of the Qing Dynasty could not meet the princess often.
If the prince consort wants to meet the princess, he has to wait for a fixed date every month, otherwise he will use gold, silver and treasures to bribe the wet nurse. The existence of
This situation led to the unhappy life of the princess and the prince-consort during the Qing Dynasty, and is also considered the disadvantage of the wet nurse system.
At that time, the original intention of establishing the wet nurse system was to prevent the princes from getting too close to their biological mothers, so as to prevent the influence of foreign relatives and forces in the court.
After using the wet nurse system, another force surged in from the court.
The influence of foreign relatives during the Qing Dynasty was indeed relatively small, but the power of the wet nurse was replaced by the wet nurse. For example, Emperor Kangxi once reused his wet nurse Sun's husband's family and favored Sun's son more.
From this we can see that the system of wet nurses was originally created to avoid the interference of foreign relatives and to meet the needs of princes and concubines.
In fact, the system of does avoid foreign relatives interfering in politics , but dramatically, the wet nurse power replaced the foreign relatives' power and became a force in the court during the Qing Dynasty.
So, the wet nurse system is generally a relatively reasonable system, but it is not perfect. In fact, where is the perfect system in the world?
