Studies find lowest breastfeeding rates among Black women, particularly in the South.
Date: 2016
Certified nurse-midwife Stephanie DeVane-Johnson links the low rates of breastfeeding among Black mothers with the enduring impact of slavery, as women she interviewed reported hearing stories of mothers and grandmothers who were forced to nurse white babies, both after and during slavery.
"There were some older Black women who wanted to disassociate themselves from the past, from slavery and the wet-nursing," she says.