Steve I. answered • 04/25/23
Experienced College Professor Specializing in Communication
What do you mean by "limitations of slavery itself?" Do you mean limitations to establishing and maintaining kin relationships? Or the overall effect slavery had on millions of people in the United States?
I'll answer as best I can based on what I think you're asking.
Kin relationships were vitally important to slaves in the United States (and elsewhere, but I'll focus on the US for an easier example). Family provided a sense of strength and comfort while working in the fields, the house, the barns, etc. Having someone to talk to, someone with whom you always have something in common, provided a foundation on which a slave could build a sense of normalcy and strength. Even kin that did not live on the same plantation provided strength.
One of the ways we can prove this is by recognizing how hard slave owners, and everyone in the entire slave structure, worked to break up families. Many families were separated when being packed into slave ships from Africa and the Caribbean. Many families were separated during auctions, especially mothers and children. Many families were broken up after children had been born to slave mothers. Husbands and wives were separated. Children were separated from each other.
It's easy to tell what those in power are most afraid of by understanding what they work hardest to destroy. Many slave families were broken up, they weren't allowed to assemble freely, they weren't allowed to read, they weren't allowed to speak freely: those in power knew that slaves could rebel if they had knowledge and relationships with their kin, so they did everything they could to prevent those things from happening.
Circling back to your original question, kin relationships provided strength and normalcy to a slave, so slave owners broke up the families as much as possible to keep their slaves subjugated in every way. This included selling/trading the children of slave mothers and slave owner fathers because the lineage of slave was matrilinear, or through the mother. None of this was by accident.
Similarly, during abolition and the attempted (both successful and unsuccessful) fleeing of slaves to the North, family networks and other networks provided a conduit through which slaves could find shelter and safety. A slave could rely on family to help them by having someone they could trust at a different plantation that might be on the route to safety and freedom.
Kin relationships were incredibly important to slaves before abolition, and they were important to slaves after as well, for some of the same reasons. The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Confederacy, but it did not guarantee them financial or educational opportunities. So slaves, who did not have many skills outside of their labors, were at a disadvantage in the somewhat free market economy of the United States at the time. They were able to rely on kin networks to create a small community of pooled skills, building their economic capital to find a better life for themselves and others.
Overall, kin networks and relationships were vitally important to the freedom, health, safety, and security of slaves before and after the Civil War in the United States.
