ABSTRACT
The records of the civil magistrate of the city of Valencia are filled with the recollections of wet nurses. The testimony of wet nurses is doubly valuable since it helps to illuminate how the experiences of the newborn children of elites compared with those of the sons and daughters of lower-class artisans and laborers. Though certainly much more research needs to be done concerning milk kinship relationships in late medieval Spain, this chapter nonetheless has demonstrated that fifteenth-century Valencians did, in fact, speak of 'milk brothers' and 'milk sisters'. Not only did the practice of sharing milk bind women and establish milk kinship bonds between wet nurses and their nurslings, but it also created bonds between their children. It was a tactic employed by women to expand and/or reinforce existing kinship networks; a form of female networking that complimented and supplemented male forms of networking.
