Each year between 1750 and the Civil War more than one-fifth of the Black women in the 15 to 44 age group bore a child. It was no accident of nature that caused the average slave woman to begin motherhood two years before the average white Southern woman.
Slaveholders, both men and women, manipulated Black women to have children early and frequently. First they used verbal prodding, then subtle practices such as giving pregnant women more food and less work. Some slaveholders used an outright system of rewards such as a new dress, or silver dollar, or Saturday afternoons off. For women who resisted these "positive" incentives coercion always existed "the threat of a whipping, sale, or both.
Medical care was usually unavailable or inadequate for pregnant slave women. Black women were neglected because of the common assumptions that they were less fragile, gave birth more easily, and therefore needed less care than white women. They were thus more likely to have a midwife deliver their child than a more costly doctor. Midwives, many of whom were slaves, were usually competent, but they could do little for women who had severe complications or for women who suffered from illness resulting from the brutality and callousness of masters, mistresses, and overseers. Women who had been whipped, forced to perform heavy tasks, or sent back to fieldwork too soon after delivery ran a high risk of death.
Motherhood structured a woman's life as much as planter manipulation of reproduction. On plantations where there were nurseries, women were constantly running back and forth between the field and the quarters to nurse their children. On farms where there was no central place for the children, women had to take their children to the fields with them and either work with them on their backs or put them down somewhere. Mothers risked a whipping if they attended their children too often; their children risked harm if left unattended.
