TAIPEI— In response to the recent contaminated Sanlu milk powder scandal, the average wages of poorly treated wet nurses have been rising in mainland China. In a nanny service center in Wenzhou of China’s Zhejiang Province, some wet nurses demanded a monthly salary of 18,000 yuan (US $2,600) , surpassing the current top salary of 10,000 yuan ($1,500) seen in Shenzhen’s wet nurse market. A wet nurse is one who performs all the regular duties of a nanny with the addition of breast feeding.
With the salaries going up, higher qualifications and an excellent service record are things being more closely looked at. According to the China Daily Morning Post published in Zhejiang Province, candidates cannot be more than 35 years old to accept an offer of employment as a wet nurse. "Women still within the six month weaning period of breast-feeding after their first pregnancy are ideal."
The Beilei Household management Company in Wenzhou started offering wet nurse services as early as 2006. The market demand at that time was average. However, since this toxic baby formula incident, the phone has been ringing off the hook for wet nurses.
Zhang Feng’e, head of the Maternity and Child Care Department of the Beilei Household Management Company, said, "Now we have a lot of qualified candidates with higher levels of education. Historically, most of our applicants have been rural women."
"Some parents are very critical when choosing a wet nurse for their baby," said Zhang. "In general they tend to pick beautiful, educated young women with high-levels of education who have rich child-care knowledge. The lowest salary for wet nurses is now 4,000 yuan ($580), compared to 3,000 yuan ($440) before the scandal."
Editor’s Note: According to the Annual Bulletin issued by the State Statistical Bureau of China in 2008, the average urban salary in China was 24, 932 yuan ($3600) per/year in 2007, the corresponding monthly salary being 2,078 yuan ($303).
