W. Joseph Wyatt, Editor

Hurricane, WV–If, as some research suggests, babies are born with distinct temperaments, is that phenomenon evidence for inheritance of temperamental behavior? Not likely, according to recent research.

According to an article in the September/October, 1998 issue of Psychology Today babies may indeed be born with temperamental predispositions but that is not to say those are inherited. For example, a fetus gets an enormous amount of hormonal “bathing” through the mother. But the mother puts out hormones in response to stress. Highly pressured mothers-to-be tend to have more active fetuses and then more irritable infants, according to the research presented.

As one researcher pointed out, “The most stressed women are working pregnant women and these days such women tend to work up to the day they deliver . . . . ”

But there are different kinds of working women, those who choose to and those who have no choice but to work. Studies show that the fetuses of poor women are less active and have less variable heart rates than the fetuses of middle class women. And poor women rate themselves as less stressed than do working middle-class women.

Stress, diet and toxins may all play a role in the development of infant temperament and intelligence, much more of a role than was previously thought.

The environment of the womb may be much more of an influence than was known up to now. As one researcher put it, “Our old notion of nature influencing the fetus before birth and nurture after birth needs an update. There is an antenatal environment, too, that is provided by the mother.”

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