BOOK: THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION

An illustrated exploration of an age-old occupation, at once life-giving and freighted with contradictory ideas about women and their bodies. The wet nurse-a woman hired to breastfeed a child not her own-is indeed attested far back in history; in fact, archaeologists have discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen’s wet nurse.

In this book, conceived as both a social history and a feminist act of reparation, artist Barbara Zucker uncovers the forgotten-perhaps deliberately buried-occupation of wet nursing. She ranges across eras and cultures, revealing the practices surrounding wet nursing and the social attitudes toward the women who worked as wet nurses, almost always out of financial necessity.