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Thank you so much for sharing Ethereal Skies, I learned a lot about the history of breastfeeding!
Lots to unpack here.
The element of feminine and scientific mystery is a big factor. No one knew how breastmilk was made physiologically, although over time it would have become clear what activities or foods increased production. Most of these accounts would have been written by men, as women did not ostensibly write or preserve oral traditions outside a midwife guild, etc.
Regarding the wet-nursing shaming in France, that was a direct twist on French colonization of the indigenous people. An excellent Phd study can be read here https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1548&context=stu_hon_theses
In New France, indigenous women were deified and shamed in the same breath (a familiar experience for a woman) for being the paragons of maternal virtue since they breastfed their own children…and also shamed for supposedly being promiscuous, polygamist, etc. These writings made their way to France and were used to shame French mothers into breastfeeding their own children and away from the custom of wet nurses. I suspect that there was a cottage industry of wet nurses at the time which men found threatening. Women traditionally ran industry around textile, beer, and anything maternal. Being too successful in any one industry was an instant red flag to male authority, which would find a way to break into the walled garden and change the female industry to suit the male ego.
Wet nurses were present in early American history as well, the role most often filled by slaves or indentured servants. This was especially true in the South. Enslaved women often had their children taken from them to be sold or killed, and then forced to feed their captors infants. Sometimes the wet nurse would raise both children together (her child becoming a personal slave to the white infant) or, the wet nurse was not allowed to even see her children as she endured the forced labor. This cruelty around the most maternal, nurturing act still has vestiges in American society today, where black maternal health and black children suffer incredibly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/08/slavery-racism-drive-toxic-double-standard-about-breastfeeding/
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