Breastfeeding and skin color

Abstract

There are several studies - especially in the USA - which show that the black or Afro-descendant population breastfeed more than white. In Brazil, people of African descent had in the colonial period the habit of
prolonged breastfeeding. In this period, the black wet nurses, the “black mothers”, were present in the lives
of white families, a fact documented by several authors, such as Gilberto Freyre, among others. O end of slavery
and the progressive miscegenation of blacks, in Brazilian society, led this race to mix its customs, changing
cultural habits and, for various reasons, whose analysis is not ours to carry out here, to be situated between the disadvantaged or among the socially excluded.