What should be done when one person is feeding another? Must both wash their hands, even though only one is touching the food and the other is only eating the food? The Gemara quotes a baraita from Yom Kippur where adults are both prohibited from eating and from washing themselves for pleasure.
The most obvious enable is a woman (sic) who needs to feed her children. She can wash one hand so that she can give them food. We are told about Shammai HaZaken refusing to feed his children on Yom Kippur until the Sages ordered him to wash both hands and feed them. Shammai is said to have not wanted to use the leniency of washing one hand; the rabbis had him wash both hands to prove that he was breaking no prohibition at all.
The Ritva teaches that the Talmud shares many situations where the Sages went beyond the letter of the law to emphasize the correct ruling. Rabbeinu Yehonatan argues that Shammai HaZaken was concerned that he would touch the food with his unwashed hand accidentally, and thus he did not feed his children. The Sages helped him to avoid this 'accident' by insisting he wash both hands.
Abaye teaches a part of this tradition: people were afraid of transmitting illness from one small child to another by Shivta, a ru'ach ra'a, evil spirit. In Ge'onic literature, Shivta was considered to be a diseased that affected mostly babies and young children transferred by dirty hands.
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