Saudi Arabia: When You're Here, You're Family (Drink Up)

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/06/09/when-youre-here-youre-f
amilysaudi-style

i did some research on this a few years ago.
This is part of milk kinship laws that exist in various forms in many  
parts
of the world, particularly the mid East, far East and parts of Eastern  
Europe.
The system predates Islam and was incorporated into Moslem law. It goes
something like this:

Babies (and also children and adults) who nurse from the same woman
are treated as kin, as blood relatives. This is because it is believed  
that
the blood of the womb becomes the mother's milk after the birth of a  
baby.
When a woman feeds a baby who is not her biological child, she becomes
the baby's milk mother, her husband becomes their milk father and her
biological and milk children become milk siblings. They may not marry,
but they share sibling relationships throughout life. They help one  
another
out in business, milk children care for their milk mothers and fathers  
when they
get older, as blood siblings do.

Sometimes,  mothers will avoid nursing another baby because they want
their children to be able to marry into that family when they are  
older, sometimes
the opposite is true, they will nurse a baby because they don't want  
their children
to marry that child, or into that family when they are older.

Women also sometimes nurse servant girls, or have servant women nurse
their mistress's babies. This serves two purposes: milk family can  
dress and act
  as family, it is much easier for a servant to fulfill her duties when
dressed as family than in the more modest dress required of women in the
presence of strangers. Also, it prevents husbands (now milk fathers)  
from
entering into (incestuous) sexual unions with servant girls.

Indeed, as in the article Dia pointed us to,  Moslem law has strict  
rules about contact
between unrelated adults of the opposite sex, and one way to make them  
related is
to become milk kin. This is not commonly done, but it does happen.

These laws also have impact on adoption and milk banking. I read an  
article
a few years ago about a physician in Egypt who tried to do something  
to help
religious Moslems adopt some of the  many orphaned babies in his  
country.
Once an adopted baby grows to a certain age, as a non-blood relative,  
he or she
is a stranger in the household and the opposite sex parent must have  
limited contact
with the child. If the child is a boy, the mother must dress in very  
modest, fully
covering cloths around her son as she would with any non related male.  
It gets quite
awkward With pumps and galactagogues, this physician helped the  
adoptive mothers
bring in a milk supply to feed their babies some milk, so that they  
could be a milk
family. There are many differing opinions among Moslem religious  
leaders how much
milk the baby needs to get in order to become milk kin.

This also affects milk banking. In Western countries, we pool milk of  
several mothers
when we process milk and the process is anonymous, donor and recipient  
mothers do
not know one another. Among Moslems this is untenable. They must know  
who the donor
is so that their children will not enter into an incestuous marriage  
when they grow up.
There was an article about this in JHL a few years back. I think it  
was in Kuwait, a baby
needed and a mom offered it, they met, and it was worked out.

Wet nursing for pay is not allowed by  Moslem law because of ethical  
concerns that
a poor mother might compromise her own baby's health in order to  
support the rest
of her family with income from wet nursing. This was not an  
unreasonable concern
and certainly was known to happen in western countries where wet  
nursing thrived
as an honorable profession. However, a system of shared nursing is  
important, in
cases where a mother cannot nurse her own baby for whatever, usually  
dire, reason.
Milk mothers are not paid, but are often given gifts throughout the  
nursing relationship.
The system of milk kinship allows cross nursing, creating lifelong  
kinship relationships
of caring and devotion (and I imagine squabbles, jealousies and fights  
as well)
as with any family.

Naomi

------------------------------------------
Naomi Bar-Yam Ph.D.
Executive Director
Mothers' Milk Bank of New England

[log in to unmask]
617-527-6263
www.milkbankne.org
------------------------------------------







------------------------------------------
Naomi Bar-Yam Ph.D.
Executive Director
Mothers' Milk Bank of New England

[log in to unmask]
617-527-6263
www.milkbankne.org
------------------------------------------








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