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The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects

The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects

Paperback

Medical ReferenceSports General

ISBN10: 022654480X
ISBN13: 9780226544809
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: Nov 5 2021
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
Leading gender and science scholar Sarah S. Richardson charts the untold history of the idea that a woman's health and behavior during pregnancy can have long-term effects on her descendants' health and welfare.

The idea that a woman may leave a biological trace on her gestating offspring has long been a commonplace folk intuition and a matter of scientific intrigue, but the form of that idea--and its staggering implications for maternal well-being and reproductive autonomy--has changed dramatically over time. Beginning with the advent of modern genetics at the turn of the twentieth century, biomedical scientists dismissed any notion that a mother--except in cases of extreme deprivation or injury--could alter her offspring's traits. Consensus asserted that a child's fate was set by a combination of its genes and post-birth upbringing.

Over the last fifty years, however, this consensus was dismantled, and today, research on the intrauterine environment and its effects on the fetus is emerging as a robust program of study in medicine, public health, psychology, evolutionary biology, and genomics. Collectively, these sciences argue that a woman's experiences, behaviors, and physiology can have life-altering effects on offspring development. Tracing a genealogy of ideas about heredity and maternal-fetal effects, The Maternal Imprint offers a critical analysis of conceptual and ethical issues provoked by the striking rise of epigenetics and fetal origins science in postgenomic biology today.

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