Milk kinship

"Colactation links two families of unequal status and creates a durable and intimate bond; it removes from 'clients' their outsider status but excludes them as marriage partners...it brings about a social relationship that is an alternative to kinship bonds based on blood." People of different races and religions could be brought together strategically through the bonding of the milk mother and their milk 'children'. Lower social class Milk kinship was as relevant for peasants as 'fostering' or as 'hosting' other children, in that it secured the good will from their masters and their wives. As previously mentioned the milk women's family is the 'core range' to the child she is nursing and they become milk kin, which may strategically be useful for the future if the child is from a higher class family, as the milk women's children will become 'milk-brothers' and 'milk-sisters.' Thus peasant women would most often play the role of the 'milk' mother to her non-biological children, and they held an important role in maintaining the connection between herself and the master whose baby she is nursing. It was also a practical way to assist families who were of a very ill mother or whose mother died in childbirth. This would have been helpful in many societies where, especially in times of war, if families perished, other members of society would end up co-parenting through the link of milk-kinship. Higher social class of France as a child with his milk-sister Henrietta of England by circle of Pierre Mignard, , National Museum in Warsaw Noble offspring were often sent to milk kin fosterers that would foster them to maturity so that the children would be raised by their successive status subordinates. The purpose of this was for political importance to build milk kin as bodyguards. This was a major practice in the Hindu Kush society. == Conflicting theories, ideas and myths ==

One particular theory mentioned by Peter Parkes is an Arab folk-analogy that breast milk is supposed to be "transformed male semen" that arises from Héritier's Somatic Scheme. Héritier's somatic explanation has since been endorsed – and apparently confirmed – by several French ethnographers of the Maghreb, also being further developed in her monograph on incest. In reaction, a few scholars have cited Islamic commentaries and jurisprudence. "A child is the product of the conjoint seed of man and woman . . . but milk is the property of woman alone; one should not conflate by analogy (qiyas) milk with male semen." Al-Qurtubi, Jami' al-ahkam V.83, cited in Benkheira (2001a: 26). The rules of Sunni marital incest apply through a standard of adoptive kin relations. But the modern jurisprudence does not negate nor explain the origin of the taboo. Héritier explains Islamic juridical reckonings of milk kinship as the continuation of a somatic scheme of male filiative substances transmitted by lactation. But Parker critically interrogates its supposition of a peculiar Arab folk-physiology of lactation, whereby breast milk is supposed to be transformed male semen, yet mentions that Héritier has properly focused attention on evidently contested issues of 'patrifiliation' by breast-feeding, which remain to be understood. Parker posits that this somatic scheme seems to be unsubstantiated by current ethnographies, and also unwarranted in understanding the juridical reckoning of milk kinship that it purports to explain. == Practices in different societies==

In Eastern Christianity Weisner-Hanks mentions the introduction in the fifteenth century of prohibitions in the Christian Canon Law, in which one is not allowed to marry any one suspected to be of respective kin. Individuals who shared godparents, and great grandparents were prohibited against marrying. The prohibitions against marriage also extended to that of natural godparents. This was because both natural and 'foster' or 'spiritual' parents had an investment on the child's spiritual well being, which would not be achieved by going against Canon Law. Iranians seemed to have "taken care to confine delegated suckling to subordinate non-kin – particularly those with whom marriage would be undesirable in any event". In Islamic societies In the early modern period, milk kinship was widely practiced in many Arab countries for both religious and strategic purposes. Like the Christian practice of godparenting, milk kinship established a second family that could take responsibility for a child whose biological parents came to harm. "Milk kinship in Islam thus appears to be a culturally distinctive, but by no means unique, institutional form of adoptive The childhood of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, illustrates the practice of traditional Arab milk kinship. In his early childhood, he was sent away to foster-parents amongst the Bedouin. By nursing him, Halimah bint Abdullah became his "milk-mother". The rest of her family was drawn into the relationship as well: her husband al-Harith became Muhammad's "milk-father", and Muhammad was raised alongside their biological children as a "milk-brother". == See also ==