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Raḍāʿ or riḍāʿa (Arabic: رضاع, رضاعة  pronounced [rɪˈdˤɑːʕ(æ)], "breastfeeding") is a technical term in Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) meaning "the suckling which produces the legal impediment to marriage of foster-kinship", and refers to the fact that under Sunni jurispurdence, a wet nurse is considered related to the infant she nurses. The term derives from the infinitive noun of the Arabic word radiʿa or radaʿa ("he sucked the breast of his mother"). Often it is translated as "fosterage" or "milk kinship". The concept of radāʿ derives from Islamic and pre-Islamic notions concerning the state of blood relations whereby a wet nurse (and her close relations) and the baby she is nursing (and his or her close family) are deemed related to one another (a status known as mahram) through the act of breastfeeding. One important consequence is that the wet nurse and her family are forbidden to marry the baby and members of the baby's family (e.g. the nursling's biological brother with the milk-mother's biological daughter). Conversely, the milk-relationship allows usually forbidden familiarities between the two groups, (e.g. if the nursling is male, when he becomes an adult he may view the milk-mother and her close female relatives unveiled or in private, exactly as if he were a relation). Thus, according to some Sahih hadith, nursing an adult male could be used as a workaround to Islamic gender segregation, so that a male may be allowed in proximity to the nursing woman, her sisters and her daughters.