Black Babywearing Week UK 2020: A Brief History of Babywearing

Welcome to Black Babywearing Week UK. This week marks our 2nd year of creating informative, educational content here in the UK inspired by the US ladies. The aim of this week is to raise awareness of traditional and cultural babywearing. Today’s insightful article will briefly touch upon The History of Babywearing.

Now when we hear of the term ‘babywearing‘ one could be forgiven for automatically associating this growing trend with something our White counterparts from Western societies predominantly do. But actually, history shows us that babywearing began in Africa… as far back as Ancient Egyptian Times.

A Brief History of Babywearing

After trailing through various articles and images on the Internet relating to traditional and cultural babywearing, I came across this beautiful Tomb Releif Fragment created between BC–671 –  BC-651 of our ancestors wearing her baby in using a piece of cloth.

Sourced from this awesome article entitled A Brief History of Babywearing which takes a closer look into how our ancestors played a pivotal part by inspiring us to keep our children close by wearing them on our chest with fabric for practical and nuturing reasons.

In addition to the above, many other parts of Africa have also been wearing their smalls for centuries.

⁣In the Maasai tribe in Kenya for example, it is common tradition that when a baby is born, this new little love is not just the child you helped co create or birthed, it is the ‘everyones’ child.

The community takes full ownership for this new member of the family. They want to bless the baby, protect it and play an active part in raising them into adulthood.⁣⁠

Babywearing has evolved since then, where an array of wraps, slings and carrier businesses have been created due to growing demand and popularity. 

In the Western World, courses have been created where one can gain a peer supporter or consultant qualification, allowing the person to teach other families how to babywear. This is standard practice within the babywearing world as we currently know it.

But let’s not forget that before such organisations and modern day super stunning yet very expensive wraps and carriers existed Black and Brown People of Colour within their countries and communities were safely keeping their child(ren) close by wearing them in everyday cloth, pieces of linen or even towels found around their homes.

Wearing our children does not have to be overly complicated nor overwhelming! Sometimes stripping it back to basics is all that is required. 

For further reading on traditional and cultural babywearing, please click HERE.

My next article for Black Babywearing Week will be an interview with Bisi – Founder of Black Owned Babywearing Brand Joy and Joe Baby.

I hope you are enjoying our content so far 🙂 I would encourage you to share and comment and interact with us to help raise awareness of Black Babywearing Week by using hashtags #blackbabywearingweekuk #babywearingincolour