One of the most devastating effects of slavery is its ability to sever bonds of love, particularly between mother and child. Sethe continues to feel the anguish of being torn from her mother, while Baby Suggs has lost all but one of her eight children. In response to such losses, some choose to reject love entirely. As Ella states, "If anybody was to ask me I'd say 'Don't love nothing.'" After her first three children were sold and a fourth was fathered by the man who sold them, Baby Suggs "could not love [that child] and the rest she would not." Likewise, Sethe realizes she couldn't properly love her children at Sweet Home "because they wasn't mine to love." Paul D. acknowledges that for a former slave woman, loving anything deeply is risky, especially her children. He observes, "For a used-to-be slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love." Yet, when he proposes to Sethe that they have a child together, Sethe prays, "Lord, deliver me. Unless carefree, mother-love was a killer." This statement is tragically ironic, given that she killed her child out of profound love.

Despite the emotional anguish maternal love can cause, the instinct to nurture often remains overpoweringly strong. Baby Suggs notes, "A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well now, that's somebody." Similarly, Sethe sees her children as "her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing—that part of her that was clean." A mother's love transcends time, as Sethe tells Paul D.: "Grown don't mean nothing to a mother ... I'll protect [Denver] while I'm live and I'll protect her when I ain't."

This relentless drive to care for her children motivates Sethe to undertake the grueling journey to Ohio despite her hardships. When recounting the beating she suffered before escaping, she repeatedly exclaims, "they took my milk!"—emphasizing the value she placed on preserving her milk for her child. Tragically, Sethe's experiences with slavery have warped her maternal instincts. In an attempt "to keep them away from what I know is terrible," Sethe tries to take her own children's lives. Paul D. describes this love as "too thick," but Sethe, who grew up without a mother, never learned to distinguish the difference: "Love is or it ain't," she asserts. "Thin love ain't love at all."