The passage below from Aulus Gellius's encyclopedia Noctes Atticae provides insight into mid-2nd century CE upper-class male expectations of women's responsibilities in birthing and nursing their offspring and into the social circumstances surrounding this event so critical for family and state (note the perhaps idealized relief of a well-to-do nursing mother to the left). While Gellius' story shows male concern for the character formation of the new citizen (the child is male; would the same argument have been made for a female child?), it evidences as well the role played at this risky moment in a young woman's life by her mother, who places her daughter's safety first. Although he inquires after the new mother's situation, the philosopher Favorinus (c. 80-160 CE) objects to plans for hiring a wet-nurse (nutrix), advancing the scientific and moral reasoning of the day. Gellius calls the young woman puella not matrona, a reference to her youth rather than her married state. While her years are not announced, girls in elite families could be married as early as puberty (cautioned against by the physician Soranus), a time when pregnancy and childbirth were even more dangerous to mother and child than normal. The upper-classes customarily entrusted the long period of nursing and infant care to slaves or poor women, an act Favorinus attributes to vanity (see also Seneca, WRW p. 71); however, a wet-nurse would allow this young mother's body time to recover from a difficult birth and to complete its maturation. For a discussion of the portrayal of nursing mothers in classical art, see Bonfante's article in Koloski-Ostrow & Lyons (1997) in the Bibliography.