A scoping review of wet nursing in the Muslim world

Abstract

  The recruitment of wet nurses among Malaysians is increasing. This is due to the awareness on the benefit of breastmilk for infant’s growth and protection against diseases.  However, the consequence of breastfeeding in Islam is tremendous, that is, the milk-mother and the child she breastfed are now become as blood mother and child. This means that a new set of family tie is formed between the nursling and the wet nurse’s family which needs to be addressed to avoid future problems such as health risk and incest if proper documentation and maintaining of family connection are not done. Since this phenomenon is quite new in the contemporary time, an understanding of this phenomenon is important to inform further action. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted to summarise and synthesise existing studies on wet nursing in the Muslim world. This is important to identify gap in literature on wet nursing in Islam. Thirty-nine articles which met the selection criteria were reviewed and classified according to the emergent themes. The themes were wet nursing from Islamic perspective; wet nurses and milk donors; history of wet nursing; experiences of wet nurses; breastmilk bank and milk donation; documentation of wet nursing; and father’s role in wet nursing. This review found a huge gap in literature specifically on how both the wet nurses’ and the nurslings’ families stay connected; and what needs to be done in terms of documentation to ensure easy tracing of family line in the future.