From our concern with morbidity and mortality in Chapter 7 we turn now to problems associated with slave reproduction. The diseases and disorders of infants and children and pregnant and lactating women are treated in greater depth, as are the pro-natal policies and practices of planters and the difficulty of reconciling these policies to an economy and society that had long regarded women as primarily work units rather than breeding units.

Patterns of reproduction

Despite the great natural fecundity of the African race, the female slaves in the British West Indies were less fertile than their sisters in Africa and North America. Both contemporary and modern writers have sought to explain the basic differences of slave demography in terms of the cultural and psychological shock of enslavement, the survival of African mating and child-rearing customs, pro- and anti-natalist policies of slaveholders, disease environments, conditions of labor and livelihood, and economic factors related to the Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery.