Abstract：From the Mid-late Tang Dynasty, the Wet Nurses-Trade's professionalism had become increasingly obvious. As a result of the mid-upper-class women refused to nurse their own babies themselves as time went on to the Song Dynasty, the Wet Nurses-Trade stepped into the highly developed professionalism stage with apparent commercial nature .At this time, not only the number of the wet nurses was huge, but also it appeared highly consistent typicality and group feature of the wet nurses' appearance characteristics, clothing and posture as well as the temperament and so on. The higher return of the wet nurses-trade comparing to the other jobs made the women having the lowest social status flocking to it. But the upper-class society made out strict choosing standards upon the wet nurses as the professional group was enlarging. The highly professional wet nurses concerned with two key problems in the Song Dynasty in fact, that is :For one thing, the professional wet nurses are the important participants on the baby-caring for the employer under the poor medical condition and the babies' high death-rate. The wet nurses devoted their whole life time working for their employers and even had brought up several generations of the employer's family. The wet nurses had been regarded as the upper-class society babies' patron saint and received an extreme high respect to a considerable extent. For another, the particularity of the wet nurses' professional identity determined that they have to give birth to a child themselves before they started their nursing careers. According to the historical record at hand, there was little possibility that the professional wet nurse could bring their own babies into the employer's home to bring up them together with the employer's babies. As a result of this, their own babies almost always had been lost at home and brought up by the grand-parents with the rice juice or had been sold ,donated, discarded or even drowned. There are always one or more tragedies of abandoning and drowning babies hiding behind the most professional wet nurses. However, at present, scholars basically ignored the inevitable relationship between the high professionalization of wet nurses and the serious folk baby- abandoning and drowning in the Song Dynasty.
张廷波. 宋代乳母高度职业化与生子不举问题史证[J]. 《深圳大学学报》（人文社科版）, 2023, 40(3): 150-159.
ZHANG Ting-bo. The Historical Study on the Problem of the Wet Nurses' Highly Professionalism and Abandoning and Drowning Babies in the Song Dynasty. , 2023, 40(3): 150-159.
2023, Vol. 40 
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