The Maternal Imprint

A rich, elegantly argued analysis of the long history of scientific and popular thinking about 'maternal effects' on the fetuses that women gestate, full of well-articulated plunges into the archives of scientific texts and journals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is an important, beautifully researched, and well-written book by an author whose prior works have literally changed their fields. -- Rayna Rapp, New York University Richardson provides a detailed historical and sociological narrative, spanning the period from pre-Weismann concepts of heritability to modern day epigenetics. Although Weismann's work paved the way for the Modern Synthesis, its emphasis on a disposable soma led him to challenge the very legitimacy of research into maternal influences and prenatal culture. Modern epigenetics research appears to address this challenge. Richardson's gender analysis of peer-reviewed science reveals that epigenetics is not just the newest cutting-edge, pro-social, plasticity-favoring, anti-genetic, and anti-reductionist field to emerge from modern molecular genetics. Rather, it is also the 'vector' of newly problematic images and social roles that limit women and diminish the status of pregnancy and motherhood, in ways that are disturbingly similar to nineteenth century societal notions of women's roles. Richardson's exquisitely documented arguments are of compelling interest to all with an interest in the complex interface of science and society. -- Michael J. Wade, Indiana University