A Family Affair

Parents, Children and Society

Jay Belsky is Director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues and Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck University of London. Belsky is an expert in the field of child development and family studies. See full bio

August 12, 2008, Child Development

Middle Age Begins Before Birth

Experience in the womb influences health in middle age.

In my previous blog entry I floated the argument that for some it is commonsensical that what happens early in life is of little importance to how individuals turn out later in life. Without embracing this view, I pointed out that some psychologists argue, seemingly convincingly, that "it would make no sense for life-span development to be shaped by what happens to a baby, a toddler or even an older preschool child. Life is long and adulthood is far away in time from the early years, so evolution would never craft an organism whose future functioning was influenced in important ways by experiences had at the hand of his parents--or others--very early in life."

It appears to be indisputably the case that, at least in some respects, this claim is fundamentally false. Indeed, one of the remarkable discoveries of recent years, which warms the cockles of the heart of this developmentalist who has long embraced the view that experiences early in life are of consequence to later development, is that experiences in the womb prior to birth shape physical health in middle age! More specifically, medical research reveals that poor growth in the womb, often leading to low birth weight and frequently a result of poor or limited maternal and, thereby, fetal nutrition, results in increased probability of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in middle age. Before saying anything more, let me make clear that it is most certainly not the case that each and every one of us who was under-nourished as a fetus and/or who was born prematurely (like myself), will succumb to one or more of these "metabolic diseases" by the time they are 40 or 50, if not before. Nevertheless, the empirical link between experience in the womb and health in middle age has now been chronicled with sufficient frequency that the skepticism that this association met when first documented has given way to advances in scientific theory, health research and medical treatment. For those interested in learning more about the whys and wherefores of this relatively new set of early-experience findings, let me recommend the eminently readable volume by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson entitled The Fetal Matrix, published in 2004 by Oxford University Press (http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521...).

But what has this all got to do with psychology? Perhaps most obviously, health psychology is a major arena of the ever expanding field of psychological science, so it is now clear that those interested in physical health and its psychological repercussions would benefit from thinking developmentally--all the way back to the womb. But of more importance to this blog is that the dramatic and surprising discovery linking diseases of middle age with experiences had before birth severely undermines the confidence that can be placed in the putative common-sense logic with which I introduced this blog entry. Simply put, if the claim that natural selection would not shape development so that functioning in later life would be influenced by what happens much earlier in life does not apply to physical health, why should it apply to psychological and behavioral development? Only if one retains an untenable and outdated distinction between mind (i.e., psychology) and body (i.e., physical health) can one hold on to the "it-does-not-make-sense" argument. In other words, either it doesn't make sense for early experience to matter--at all--or it remains possible, even if not certain, that it does when it comes to psychological and behavioral fucntioning. Thus, evidence that very early experience--as a fetus--makes a difference to later life in major ways pertaining to life and death implies that other early experiences could also make a difference to later life.