What makes us the way we are? Some say its the genes we inherit at conception. Others are sure its the environment we experience in childhood. But could it be that many of our individual characteristicsour health, our intelligence, our temperamentsare influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth?
What makes us the way we are? Some say its the genes we inherit at conception. Others are sure its the environment we experience in childhood. But could it be that many of our individual characteristicsour health, our intelligence, our temperamentsare influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth?
Thats the claim of an exciting and provocative field known as fetal origins. Over the past twenty years, scientists have been developing a radically new understanding of our very earliest experiences and how they exert lasting effects on us from infancy well into adulthood. Their research offers a bold new view of pregnancy as a crucial staging ground for our health, ability, and well-being throughout life.
Author and journalist Annie Murphy Paul ventures into the laboratories of fetal researchers, interviews experts from around the world, and delves into the rich history of ideas about how were shaped before birth. She discovers dramatic stories: how individuals gestated during the Nazi siege of Holland in World War II are still feeling its consequences decades later; how pregnant women who experienced the 9/11 attacks passed their trauma on to their offspring in the womb; how a lab accident led to the discovery of a common household chemical that can harm the developing fetus; how the study of a century-old flu pandemic reveals the high personal and societal costs of poor prenatal experience.
Origins also brings to light astonishing scientific findings: how a single exposure to an environmental toxin may produce damage that is passed on to multiple generations; how conditions as varied as diabetes, heart disease
A guide aiming to alleviate the anxiety that many women feel when they obsess over prenatal influences explores how fetuses are shaped in utero, separating the evidence from the hype, and examines the cultural mania that surrounds pregnancy today.
