The Mother and the Dida [Nanny]: Female Employers and Wet Nurses in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona 1

This chapter focuses on what the documentation reveals and implies about the relationships between women employers and the wet nurses who nourished their children. Widespread mortality increasingly challenged societal norms of labor and, soon after the plague hit, did result in significantly better remuneration for those in paid service as wet nurses in Barcelona. For fourteenth-century Barcelona, employment contracts are the most common type of notarial entry concerning wet-nursing to survive. From 1295 to 1380, wet nurses in Barcelona could expect to receive higher salaries than other adult women in domestic service. Mothers were actively involved in the employment of wet nurses for their children. The high social rank of those who employed wet nurses in Barcelona from 1295 to 1380 can be inferred from their occupations and the fact that some explicitly describe themselves as members of the urban elite.