{"id":334351,"date":"2021-12-14T16:20:43","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T21:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=334351"},"modified":"2023-11-08T19:57:02","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T00:57:02","slug":"exploring-history-of-maternal-effects-on-offspring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2021\/12\/exploring-history-of-maternal-effects-on-offspring\/","title":{"rendered":"Your best, worst traits: Was it something mom did while pregnant?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"Sarah

GenderSci Lab director Sarah S. Richardson discuses findings from her new book, \u201cThe Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects.\u201d <\/p>

Stephanie Mitchell\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

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\n\t\tYour best, worst traits: Was it something mom did while pregnant?\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tJill Radsken\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tSarah Richardson traces history of scientific debate over lasting effects of maternal behavior, experiences\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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Beliefs about which specific maternal behaviors or experiences have lasting effects on gestating offspring have shifted widely over time. In her new book, \u201cThe Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects,\u201d Sarah S. Richardson<\/a>, professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality, gives this rich history a clearer context in the discussion of reproductive responsibility. The Gazette spoke to Richardson, director of the Harvard GenderSci Lab<\/a>, which studies biomedical research on sex and gender, about birth weight, bibliometrics, and her personal connection to histories of maternal stress. This interview was edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

Q&A<\/h2>\n

Sarah S. Richardson<\/h3>\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> \u201cThe Maternal Imprint\u201d seems to intersect your professional and personal lives. Can you talk about why you wrote it?<\/p>\n

RICHARDSON:<\/strong> My ear was turned by reading about studies of intergenerational Holocaust trauma at the level of the gene. This was around 2010, when a new field of science called epigenetics was emerging, claiming to solve a longstanding and problematic question in genetics, which is: How does the environment interact with our genes to change the way we grow and develop?<\/p>\n

The hope was that these patterns of intergenerational transmission of trauma that had been explained narratively through stories could somehow be verified through empirical, material science. And I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. I am also the granddaughter of somebody who lived through the famed Dutch famine, which is another major study area in this field. So I couldn\u2019t help but be riveted.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, all of these claims were constructed through the matriline. I recognized as a historian of science that this new science was re-energizing a set of claims from the history of biology and genetics regarding the unique contribution of the mother to heredity. I saw it as deeply intertwined with a set of contestations about genetic determinism, and with conceptions of our bodies as both biological and social.<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cThe hope was that these patterns of intergenerational transmission of trauma that had been explained narratively through stories could somehow be verified through empirical, material science.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> Your research details a lot of eugenics history. What did this field have to offer you in the context of reproduction?<\/p>\n

RICHARDSON:<\/strong> I was writing the chapter on prenatal culture when I was pregnant with my first child, and I actually found comfort in reading some of those funny ideas \u2014 for example, that you could do math equations while you\u2019re pregnant to make a child who would be an accountant. It was sort of a beautiful thing. They were encouraging women to take control of their lives as pregnant women and suggesting that you could have some control over your future offspring, which in our current environment, where the risk discourse and the surveillance of pregnant people is incredibly intense, was such a different, almost magical space to step into.<\/p>\n

I also think people will be surprised \u2014 and this is a well-known fact, though continuously underappreciated \u2014 that in the eugenic era, it wasn\u2019t all about genetic determinism. It encompassed a wide range of prescriptions for health that included modes of behavior for before getting pregnant, while you are pregnant, and early development, that were laden with social values about the kinds of lives that were valuable.<\/p>\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> Maybe my favorite phrase in the book is \u201cpop-science catnip,\u201d which is what you call epigenetics. Can you explain?<\/p>\n

RICHARDSON:<\/strong> Epigenetics has been cast in public conversation as something that allows you to shape your own potential and overcome hereditary limitations. This possibility of self-help, of plasticity, and of improvement and optimization walks right into our constantly contested ideas about our bodies, how we\u2019re situated in generational time, and the degree to which outcomes are the result of nurture versus nature. And then you add the gender part, with women warned that if you eat a single potato chip you could be destining your child to a life of sloth and ADHD \u2014 definitely pop-science catnip.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all very familiar with claims of the risks of fetal alcohol poisoning, or of not having enough folic acid in your diet when pregnant. This all comes from an earlier era of teratological research, which focused on an exposure to or deficit in a specific chemical agent or teratogen, imbibed by the mother, carried across the placenta, and impacting the fetus.<\/p>\n

I am, in this book, talking about a different register of claims: this phenomenological thing called \u201cmaternal effects.\u201d It\u2019s something mediated by the mother\u2019s body \u2014 her constitution, her condition, her environment. An obese mother would be an example of the prototypical exposure environment. The causes are very subtle exposures, and the effect sizes are small. We\u2019re not talking about birth defects that are visible at birth that are extremely disabling. We\u2019re talking about a couple of extra centimeters on the waist at age 59 after some exposure in the womb.<\/p>\n

In short, this new field of science studies the coupling of small variations in the fetal environment with small variations in long-term health or development. It\u2019s a different register of claims \u2014 and this is something I\u2019m very interested to explore in the book, what I call crypticity, which characterizes the field\u2019s knowledge landscape.<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cThis possibility of self-help … walks right into our constantly contested ideas about our bodies … And then you add the gender part, with women warned that if you eat a single potato chip you could be destining your child to a life of sloth and ADHD \u2014 definitely pop-science catnip.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> You devote a chapter to birth weight, which has such an outsized reputation as a birth marker. Talk about your findings.<\/p>\n

RICHARDSON:<\/strong> I could have written a whole book on birth weight, and maybe I should. It\u2019s fascinating. Isn\u2019t it incredible that we write on our birth announcements what the weight was?<\/p>\n

The fascination with birth weight really developed in the \u201960s and \u201970s, a precursor to the same set of questions fascinating scientists today in the field of fetal epigenetic programming research. Could it be that the variation in fetal environment is a cryptic, as-yet-unappreciated cause of variation in life outcomes in the world? A whole body of scholarship \u2014 tens of thousands of papers \u2014 emerged correlating birth weights, which you can easily retrieve from birth certificates, with everything from health conditions and lung disorders to things like IQ, which I talk about in this chapter.<\/p>\n

This research was racialized from its inception. It\u2019s well known that there\u2019s quite a racial disparity in birth weight in the United States, and that\u2019s been quite persistent over time. I tell the story of scientists\u2019 attempts to figure out why. The original theory was that it was all genetic, and there was just a different baseline for Black American babies [more of whom have low birth weights] compared to white American babies.<\/p>\n\r\n

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