August 26, 2025
The historical pain from slavery still resonates, shaping complex and often painful relationships with breastfeeding in the Black community.
A Traumatic Legacy
For over a decade, Black Breastfeeding Week has served as a powerful testament to the resilience and determination of Black mothers, creating a space to celebrate and advocate for a healthier future. Yet, this annual observance also serves as a poignant reminder of a painful history. The brutal practice of forcing enslaved Black women to act as wet nurses for white children was a widespread and deliberate act of control, one that stripped Black women of their autonomy and commodified their bodies.
This exploitation inflicted a legacy of trauma that continues to affect Black women’s relationships with breastfeeding today. The historical pain from slavery still resonates, shaping complex and often painful relationships with breastfeeding in the Black community.
Enforced Wet Nursing And Familial Disruption
The forced use of enslaved Black women as wet nurses was a heart-wrenching practice that stripped them of their fundamental maternal rights. Enslavers viewed an enslaved woman’s breast milk as a valuable asset to be bought, sold, or rented, with records of these transactions appearing in newspapers across the Americas and Brazil.
To ensure a constant, available milk supply for their own children, enslavers would forcibly separate enslaved mothers from their own infants, sometimes permanently. This cruel act denied the Black children the immunological and nutritional benefits of their mother’s milk, often leading to a reliance on inadequate substitutes like dirty water or cow’s milk, which contributed to devastatingly high infant mortality rates. The emotional and psychological trauma for these mothers, who endured the grief of separation while being forced to nurture another’s child, was immense and lasting.
The Purpose Of Enforced Wet Nursing
The motivations behind this practice were multifaceted and insidious. For affluent white women, hiring a wet nurse was a symbol of social status that freed them from the perceived “drudgery” of breastfeeding. For enslavers, the practice served as a tool of manipulation and control, allowing them to dictate the reproductive lives of enslaved women whose bodies were seen as tools for labor and profit. Enslavers would often time the pregnancies of enslaved women to align with their wives’ due dates, ensuring a lactating woman was always available. Accounts suggest that some enslaved mothers were even beaten to ensure compliance, a horrific form of coercion that contributed to the racist stereotype of Black mothers as unloving or harsh, a narrative used to justify the enslavers’ inhumanity.
The Lasting Legacy Of Breastfeeding
The trauma of enforced wet nursing created a historical wound that has never fully healed. This history contributes to a cultural memory where breastfeeding is painfully associated with exploitation and a lack of autonomy. For some, avoiding breastfeeding became a way to reclaim agency and disassociate from this painful past. This is a sentiment that has been passed down through generations, with some older Black women discouraging younger women from breastfeeding, believing it to be a practice tied to a period of servitude. The advent of infant formula further compounded this intergenerational trauma, as companies aggressively targeted Black communities with marketing campaigns that framed formula as a modern, sophisticated alternative to a painful history.
Today, these historical factors, combined with enduring systemic barriers, contribute to significant disparities. The high labor participation rate of Black women—higher than any other group—means they are often the primary economic support for their families. The financial pressure forces many to return to work sooner, often to jobs that lack paid family leave or adequate lactation accommodations. Despite legal mandates, employers frequently fail to comply, leaving Black workers vulnerable to demotion, harassment, or job loss for simply trying to exercise their right to breastfeed. Furthermore, inequities in healthcare and a lack of culturally competent support from medical institutions compound the problem. The relatively low breastfeeding rate for Black mothers is therefore not a matter of personal choice but a direct result of systemic racism that continues to impact their health and well-being.
The fight for Black maternal and infant health requires more than just promoting breastfeeding. It demands a comprehensive effort to acknowledge and dismantle the centuries of historical trauma and systemic inequities that have made this natural act a struggle.
The lasting effects of forced wet nursing are a painful reminder that for Black women, the fight to nourish their children is not just a personal choice—it is a struggle against a system that has long denied them the very foundation of wellness. The only way forward is to prioritize policies that remove barriers to health and well-being for all.
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