page_title: Milk kinship
section_title: Higher social class
hierarchical_section_title: Milk kinship / Strategic reasons for milk kinship / Higher social class
caption_attribution_description: English: It is erroneous the identification of second sitter as a young Henrietta of England because she was born in 1644 and Louis XIV of France six years before in 1638.
context_page_description: Milk kinship, formed during nursing by a non-biological mother, was a form of fostering allegiance with fellow community members. This particular form of kinship did not exclude particular groups, such that class and other hierarchal systems did not matter in terms of milk kinship participation.
  Traditionally speaking, this practice predates the early modern period, though it became a widely used mechanism for developing alliances in many hierarchical societies during that time. Milk kinship used the practice of breast feeding by a wet nurse to feed a child either from the same community, or a neighbouring one. This wet nurse played the strategic role in forging relations between her family and the family of the child she was nursing, as well as their community.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Portrait of Louis XIV of France as a child with his milk-sister Henrietta of England by circle of Pierre Mignard, ca. 1646, National Museum in Warsaw.
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