However this was all to change when traders and planters began to buy more female slaves since they could labour in the fields and in their masters homes bringing valuable skills with them.
"An African-American female slave would be effectively head of household even where there was a known and partially responsible father any master or mistress-supplied child welfare assistance went through the mother, and therefore strengthened the role, power, and economic position of the mother (internet)" .
The bonds developed by many slaves on the voyage across the Middle Passage continued and developed becoming a primary source of social organization that continued for decades. Systems of kinship varied in West Africa in the different regions but "it was commonly accepted that kinship was "the principal way of ordering relations between individuals (Walvin 2001;p 174)".
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By the mid eighteenth century within the Chesapeake region and despite the mammoth difficulties slaves had to endure, family systems developed and became the cornerstone of slave life. North American slaves lived together in buildings near to their place of work. Allowed by their owners to bring up their children and organize their domestic lives, they carried out their chores, cooking, making clothes, and their leisure activities all within distance of their masters house enabled the slave community to flourish. Living in such close proximity to whites began to influence some of the cultural habits of the slaves this could be seen for instance in how child rearing practices and child-care changed amongst slave women directly influenced by their white mistresses. .
Like their slave counterparts in America slaves in Barbados by the end of the eighteenth century lived in an immediately recognizable nuclear family. Parents lived with their children although husbands might belong to another property. Links via relations to other family members in other villages created the kinship ties and the same sense of identity similar to slaves in North America.