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

Author:   Sarah S. Richardson
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
ISBN:  

9780226544779


Pages:   376
Publication Date:   08 November 2021
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects


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Full Product Details

Author:   Sarah S. Richardson
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.513kg
ISBN:  

9780226544779


ISBN 10:   022654477
Pages:   376
Publication Date:   08 November 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Maternal Imprint 2. Sex Equality in Heredity 3. Prenatal Culture 4. Germ Plasm Hygiene 5. Maternal Effects 6. Race, Birth Weight, and the Biosocial Body 7. Fetal Programming 8. It’s the Mother! 9. Epilogue: Gender and Heredity in the Postgenomic Moment Acknowledgments Notes References Index  

Reviews

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


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


Author Information

Sarah S. Richardson is professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. She directs the Harvard GenderSci Lab and is the author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, also published by the University of Chicago Press. 

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