The Maternal Imprint

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Leading gender and science scholar Sarah S. Richardson explores the history of the belief that a woman's health and behavior during pregnancy can significantly impact her descendants' long-term health and welfare. This idea, once a common folk intuition, has evolved dramatically since the early twentieth century. Initially, biomedical scientists dismissed the notion that a mother could influence her offspring’s traits, asserting that genetics and upbringing were the sole determinants of a child's fate. However, over the past fifty years, this consensus has been challenged, leading to a burgeoning field of research on the intrauterine environment and its effects on fetal development. Today, various disciplines, including medicine, public health, psychology, evolutionary biology, and genomics, support the notion that a woman’s experiences and physiology can profoundly affect her offspring. By tracing the evolution of ideas surrounding heredity and maternal-fetal effects, the author provides a critical analysis of the conceptual and ethical implications of epigenetics and fetal origins science, particularly concerning maternal well-being and reproductive autonomy in the context of contemporary postgenomic biology.