Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those Who are Creating the Future

by Marie Carmichael Stopes

On the power of the mother directly to influence her child while it is still unborn, diametrically opposite opinions have been expressed, and without exaggeration I think one may safely say that the tendency of biological science has been to scout the idea as “old wives’ tales” and incredible superstition. Fortunate indeed it is that though our immature and often blundering science has in many ways permeated and influenced our lives, yet this denial of profound truth by those incapable of handling it in the true terms of science, has not entirely barred this avenue of power to the mother. Fortunately there are innumerable children who owe their physical and spiritual well-being to the profound racial knowledge still dormant in the true woman. As I said when I touched upon this question in Married Love:—

Yet all the wisest mothers whom I know vary only in the degree of their belief in this power of the mother. All are agreed in believing that the spiritual and mental condition and environment of the mother does profoundly affect the character and spiritual powers of the child.

Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist and co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of Evolution, was in many respects a pioneer of unusual foresight and penetrating observation, who thought that the transmission of mental influence from the mother to the child was neither impossible nor even very improbable. In 1893 he published a long letter detailing cases, which he prefaced by saying:—

The popular belief that prenatal influences on the mother affect the offspring physically, producing moles and other birth-marks, and even malformations of a more or less serious character, is said to be entirely unsupported by any trustworthy facts, and it is also rejected by physiologists on theoretical grounds. But I am not aware that the question of purely mental effects arising from prenatal mental influences on the mother has been separately studied. Our ignorance of the causes, or at least of the whole series of causes, that determine individual character is so great, that such transmission of mental influences will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable. It is one of those questions on which our minds should remain open, and on which we should be ready to receive and discuss whatever evidence is available; and should a primâ facie case be made out, seek for confirmation by some form of experiment or observation, which is perhaps less difficult than at first sight it may appear to be.

In one of the works of George or Andrew Combe, I remember a reference to a case in which the character of a child appeared to have been modified by the prenatal reading of its mother, and the author, if I mistake not, accepted the result as probable, if not demonstrated. I think, therefore, that it will be advisable to make public some interesting cases of such modification of character which have been sent me by an Australian lady in consequence of reading my recent articles on the question whether acquired characters are inherited. The value of these cases depends on their differential character. Two mothers state that in each of their children (three in one case and four in the other) the character of the child very distinctly indicated the prenatal occupations and mental interests of the mother, though at the time they were manifested in the child they had ceased to occupy the parent, so that the result cannot be explained by imitation. The second mother referred to by my correspondent only gives cases observed in other families which do not go beyond ordinary heredity.

... Changes in mode of life and in intellectual occupation are so frequent among all classes that materials must exist for determining whether such changes during the prenatal period have any influence on the character of the offspring. The present communication may perhaps induce ladies who have undergone such changes, and who have large families, to state whether they can trace any corresponding effect on the character of their children.—Nature, August 24 1893, pp. 389, 390.

Yet this suggestive pronouncement of the world-famous naturalist has never been seriously followed up by scientists.

I think the time is now ripe for a definite statement that: The view that the pregnant woman can and does influence the mental states of the future child is to-day a scientific hypothesis which may be shortly proved. I make this definite statement, in conjunction with the cognate and illuminating facts from other fields of research, a few of which are discussed in the following pages.

That our mental states can affect, not only our spirits and our points of view, but actually the physical structure of our bodies, is demonstrable in a hundred different ways, and appears either to be proved or merely suggested according to the bias and temperament of the one to whom the demonstration is made. But there is one at least of these physical correlations which can be demonstrated with scientific thoroughness, and which proves beyond doubt that the mental state of the mother has a reaction upon her infant even after it has severed its physical connection with her, and is a baby of a few months old. This fact is that a nursing mother who is subjected to a violent shock which results in a paroxysm of temper or of terror in her own mind, conveys the physical result of this to her infant when next she nurses it, so that the child has either an attack of indigestion or a fit. The effect of the mother’s mental state is transmitted by the influence on the milk, the chemical composition of which is subtly altered by her nervous paroxysm, and which thus acts as a poison to the infant.

A much more subtle and closer correlation must exist between the mother’s mental states and the child when it is still not yet free and independent in the outer environment of the world but while it finds in her body its entire environment, its protection and the resources out of which it is building its own structure, while the blood and the tissues of her body form its whole world, while through them and through them alone can it obtain all its nourishment.