The Word “Doula” and the Colonized Harm Behind It
dou·la /ˈdoōlə/ f. noun.
A woman, typically without formal obstetric training, who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor.
(Modern-day definition)
Let’s be clear, community care through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is nothing new. Mothering the mother, birth keepers, and families caring for families have been around since the beginning of time, long before the Western world ever called it “doula work.”
In ancient Greece, someone born into slavery and belonging to a master was called a doulos if male. During the Byzantine era, the term “slave” even expanded to include Slavic war captives; another example of how language shifts and oppression adapts.
δούλη (doúlē) /ˈðula/ f. noun.
slave female
obsolete: maidservant
δοῦλος (doûlos) /ˈðu.los/ m. noun.
born slave or bondman
The word “doula” is also linked to the Greek word douleiá (δουλειά). It started as a term for someone forced to labor as a slave and later evolved to mean work of any kind, paid or forced.
“As for its meaning, becoming a “doulos/doula” was initially an act of grace on the part of the winners in a war: they would allow the defeated to live, and they, in return, would offer their services in the family, in a spirit of gratefulness. The ‘master’ had serious responsibilities towards his slaves, e.g. to provide enough food for them and acceptable conditions of living and work, and if he fell back on his responsibilities, the slave had every right to leave without being prosecuted. In certain families, the slave, if he was of noble roots and had a superior intellectual background than his master, would take on the children’s education. In a similar way, the female “doula” cared for the family and the children, as an integral part of family life.”
—Maria Andreoulaki
So even though today’s image of a doula is warm and nurturing, the word’s roots sit inside a system where people were owned, controlled, and forced to serve the wealthy or the winners of war. Back then, a doula might have cared for children, managed the household, or even taught the children, but still within the condition of enslavement.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the term got its Western rebranding. Dana Raphael used “doula” in her book The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding, describing a woman who “mothers the mother” and offers care and support. Not long after, doctors Marshall Klaus and John Kennell adapted the term “doula” and used it in their childbirth research. They found that women who had another woman with them during birth felt more supported and had better outcomes.
And just like that, the modern doula role was born, thanks to a white woman and two white men who had no ties to the culture the word came from.
It’s giving… you know that moment when kids are playing, and one has a toy in their hands, and another kid snatches it, acting like they discovered it first? Then, when the original kid tries to take it back, the other kid yells, “Mine!”
The Western world loves to rename, repackage, and profit from what was never theirs to begin with.
::Deep Breath::
Words carry weight. Sometimes, they hold centuries of trauma and memory. When we call ourselves doulas, we are stepping into a word that, at its root, meant someone was owned by another person against their will.
And let’s not pretend it’s a coincidence that the term was popularized in the West by people who never bothered to ask permission, build relationship, or consider the cultural weight of what they were taking.
Also, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color were never centered when the term doula was taken, repackaged, and made professional. Today, the only way many birthworkers are recognized as legitimate is by getting certified through training organizations that have built entire certification economies around this work.
Organizations such as DONA International, whose co-founder is… can you guess?
The late Dr. Marshall Klaus, who was mentioned above.
When we talk about reclaiming and decolonizing birthwork, we cannot skip over the ways Black and Indigenous cultures have been colonized, repackaged, and sold back through the same systems that once enslaved our ancestors.
Let’s not pretend that harm is buried in the past. It is alive today in every system that keeps us from fully owning our traditions.
This work is the work of our ancestors. It was passed down through their hymns, their rituals, their traditions. It is sacred. It is powerful. But it has been made a mockery of, all in the name of capitalism.
We are the return to this work.
We answered the calling of the ancestors. We are the descendants of birth ritual. We are the way-makers of tradition. Our ancestors called us to take our place here and guide people through their transition into parenthood.
So to take generations of birth wisdom from Black and Indigenous people and give it a name that carries the weight, hurt, and anguish of another people on another land, a name tied to people being owned, controlled, or kept against their will, reveals the harm baked into the rebranding, whether the people who popularized it intended to see it or not.
Our ways of caring for families have been dissected, renamed, and sold back to us at the cost of another culture’s pain. So much of what is taught in doula trainings today is built on the backs of ancestral knowledge and then had the scraps labeled as “out of scope.”
Imagine being a Black or Indigenous person called to this work, feeling that deep pull from generations of wisdom, and finding out that the only word recognized by hospitals, certification agencies, and mainstream birth culture is a word that literally means “slave.”
It is not enough to say, “But that’s not what it means now.”
We cannot pretend language does not carry the weight of its history. That word did not come to this work from a place of respect or honor. It was taken from another culture and plastered over a practice that has existed since the beginning of time.
And let’s not forget that in Greece, the origin of the term “doula,” many people were deeply offended that their language was taken out of context and used as a means of profit. They wanted the word to be done away with because of the painful history it carried.
Over time, the term “doula” became too popular in America to easily undo. Unfortunately, the protests were mostly ignored.
This work deserves language that honors the lineages it comes from. Words that do not carry the legacy of ownership and control.
“This term was never mine —or yours— to use, anyway. It was never any of ours to use in this way. This alternate, secondary definition —which isn’t even sixty years old now— isn’t one that was given to the professional field from the culture and language that invented it. It wasn’t a term given by those whose Indigenous ancestral medicines and traditions were stolen and appropriated to create the very foundations of the profession itself. It wasn’t one given to the profession with integrity, moral ethics, love, respect, or even the most basic forms of authentic consideration.
So why do we use the word “doula” as we do?” —Èské Addams (she/they)
