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This Week Has Special Meaning for Black Moms
By Kimberly Seals Allers
Editorial director, Black Maternal Health
Friday, August 6, 2010
Kimberly Seals Allers encourages black mothers to speak out and support breastfeeding during World Breastfeeding Week. African American women have had the lowest breastfeeding rates in the United States for over 30 years.
(WOMENSENEWS)--August 1-7 marks World Breastfeeding Week. The annual campaign, organized by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, is the one week each year where over 170 countries worldwide pay attention to our breasts and their power to help our children.
It's no secret that I'm a huge advocate of breastfeeding as one of the most important things a woman can do to give her baby the best start in life, as well as provide herself some unparalleled health benefits. And the Black Maternal Health Project proudly supports breastfeeding and is deeply committed to understanding how we can increase breastfeeding rates among black women.
So while the campaign, now in its 19th year, speaks to the entire world, I'm speaking directly to my part of the world--the African American women who historically have had the lowest rates of breastfeeding for the recommended time periods or don't breastfeed at all.
For over 30 years, African American women have had the lowest breastfeeding rates. Though the numbers have greatly increased in recent years, black moms still have the lowest breastfeeding rates of all ethnicities. And when it comes to the gold standard of infant nutrition--six months of exclusive breastfeeding--the rate is only 20 percent among African Americans compared to 40 percent among whites.
Forces Brewing for Decades
Some of these forces have been brewing for decades. A long time ago, black women were famous for nursing. In fact, slave owners used and purchased black women as wet nurses for their own children, often forcing these mothers to stop nursing their own infants to care for others.
"On the one hand, wet nursing claimed the benefits of breastfeeding for the offspring of white masters while denying or limiting those health advantages to slave infants. On the other hand, wet nursing required slave mothers to transfer to white offspring the nurturing and affection they should have been able to allocate to their own children," writes historian Wilma A. Dunaway in the book "The African American Family in Slavery and Emancipation," published by Cambridge University Press.
Since breastfeeding reduces fertility, slave owners forced black women to stop breastfeeding early so that they could continue breeding, often to health detriment of their infants, Dunaway writes.
But there's more to our story than a stunted and complex breastfeeding experience at the hands of slave owners hundreds of years ago, though many may argue that some vestiges of slavery still exist in the mindset of the black community. Aggressive marketing by the formula companies in the 1930s and '40s made formula feeding the choice of the elite, "the substance for sophisticates"--white or black. And who doesn't want to be like the rich and famous?
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Submitted by user12198 (1 year ago)
I feel this is a very poorly written article as it does not critically deconstruct many of the reasons why black women do not breastfeed. I highly doubt it's often a result of choice. For example, many African women living with HIV do not breastfeed, so to, not pass the virus on to their children. In this way, by not breastfeeding their children, they are protecting their children. Some black single moms who must work to make ends meet, opt for formula instead of the breast as it makes things simpler when juggling a hectic schedule. I feel this article has just made some Black moms, feel further guilty, about an issue which often they have very limited decision making power in. Therefore, instead of empowering black moms, this article further crushes them. My advice, please do your research before writing.