Madres sustitutas y oficios femeninos. Nodrizas y niñeras en la Roma antigua

Abstract

This paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the cultural construction of motherhood in ancient Greco-Roman societies. For this reason the author proposes an approach to the maternal care pro-vided by nurses in Roman elite families. This role was provided by women of low status who could obtain a certain social recognition. The paper argues that these women were responsible for the emotional wellbeing of children, which is the central core of motherhood. Effectively this meant that the biological mother pla-yed a secondary role in bringing up her children. As the author emphasized, this is a notable deviation from the conventional stereotypical relation between the mother and child presented in the idealized Roman texts.