The Disturbing History Of Enslaved Mothers Who Were Forced To Breastfeed White Babies
Slave trade brought favorable advantages to the European Western Societies. The major thing they used slaves for was to work for them on their vast plantations and increasing their productivity on the plantations. The Westerners made sure that these slaves had to work very long hours under the hot sun, without being paid for the job done. They put these slaves under harsh conditions while the plantation owners became more productive.
Asides working on the plantations, the duties of some of the slaves were extended down to domestic work and female slaves were made to become of high value in the western societies. Many female slaves were then taken to their masters' homes to serve them, especially, their mistresses. They were made to cook for them, clean their homes and do their laundries. They were also made to help their mistresses who have many children, to carry and take care of the babies for them.
After a while, female slaves were made to take the place of low-class women paid to breastfeed babies, a practice known as wet nursing.
By the 17th century
Wet nursing by slaves had become very popular in Europe. The practice soon reached America through British settlers.
Most of the white mothers were then using this nursing as a kind of excuses used to avoid breastfeeding their babies. This they did was to maintain their stature. The act of breastfeeding to them, was a kind of or was thought to be as uncultured, poor and they shun it for the wet nursing, (slave mothers) who were perceived as people with dirty qualifications to do that.
The practice became very popular when doctors of the time did all they could to prove that breastfeeding was an unhealthy act for women. It is believed that doctors were paid huge sums of money to write such reports.
During the Era of slavery, the children of slaves were seen by the Westerners growing very healthy while they were losing theirs to I'll health. This then made western women to force slave mothers to start breastfeeding their own babies for better growth and good health during the early months of childhood.
By the 18th century, the trend had become very popular.
What the western woman started doing this time was that, they started looking for women slaves who were breastfeeding their babies and bring them to their homes to help them breastfeed their own babies. The slaves who had babies were made to stop breastfeeding theirs and began to breastfeed their mistresses' babies instead. The moment they started breastfeeding the white babies, the were made to stop using that same breast milk for their own babies. As you can see in the picture below, she is breastfeeding the white baby and her own has been left unattended to.
They later started forcing young and healthy slave women to breastfeed white babies after doctors found out that the continuous sucking of sexually active female breast could result in lactation.
Slave mothers then designed another method to feed their own babies since they were prevented from breastfeeding their babies with their own milk. They tried to keep their own babies alive by feeding them with concoction they believed was good as substitute for milk. The slave mothers also used cow milk to feed their babies and when they couldn't find milk, they fed them with dirty water which resulted in high death rate of babies of slaves during this period.
It came a time when slave traders started kidnapping newborn babies from the slave mothers. Some of these mothers were naturally forced to breastfeed other babies who were not theirs, but the whites, this was because the pain in their breasts left them with no choice but to breastfeed these other babies who were not theirs relieve them of breast pain. Those slave mothers who refused to breastfeed white babies were beaten and were sometimes milked like cows to feed white babies.
The western mothers were then leaving their babies in the home of the slave mothers to breastfeed them until they were mature enough, then they would take them back from them. It was later speculated that since the living conditions of the slave mothers were not healthy enough, this might affect or kill their babies, or the slave mothers might kill their babies, they decided to force them to move in with them where they could monitor them.
This practice began to slow down after slaves started getting their freedom.
The practice started to die down after slaves were slowly getting their freedom except for some few African-American women who continued wet nursing after slavery had been abolished. Wet nursing existed for many centuries.
However, in history, only slave mothers were forced into the act. When I first read this story about slave mothers who were forced to abandon their own babies just to breastfeed the white babies, I thought of so many THINGS. I began to think question myself that were they not the same whites who are now fighting human rights violation? Even in some parts of Europe, they have animal rights violation. Why then could they have punished African slaves like that.
Thank God that all these weird activities have not being in existence again.
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