When Men Lecture Women About Pregnancy and Stress

This new book spurs the debate over the effects of stress during pregnancy.Origins, Annie Murphy Paul's great book about the how everything in the world around you effects your unborn child reignites the eternal nature vs nurture debate, and has left two usually incisive writers at odds over whether or not stress is good for a baby in the womb. Both esteemed Harvard doctor Jerome Groopman and Pulitzer Prize winning Op-Ed contributor Nicholas Kristof wrote about the book in the New York Times. But were they reading the same book? 

Groopman writes: "Women who reported moderate daily anxiety and stress during pregnancy had children who scored higher in tests of motor and mental development at age 2."

But Kristof has this to say, "Perhaps the most striking finding is that a stressful uterine environment may be a mechanism that allows poverty to replicate itself generation after generation."

You might chalk this inconsistency up to different definitions of stress. Maybe Groopman is talking about the stress a woman experiences at a stressful but high paying job, while Kristof is referring to the unrelenting stress of grinding poverty--two very different animals. However, the two deep thinkers also managed to find opposing scientific explanations for the effects they chose to write about.

Groopman: "The placenta breaks down the stress hormone cortisol in the woman's blood, preventing most of it from reaching the fetus."

Kristof: "Stress in mothers seems to have particularly strong effects on their offspring, perhaps through release of cortisol, a hormone released when a person is anxious."

Come on guys, make up your minds. Both writers recognize that living through a catastrophic event during gestation--Hurricane Katrina or the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War--has demonstrably negative repercussions on a child's development. But the take-away message of Origins was radically different for these two writers. And woefully, the ever-hysterical debate about how pregnant women should live their lives rages on.

Click here to read Jerome Groopman's book review, and here to read Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed. Click here to see Healthline.com's cool graphic showing 20 effects of stress on the body.

Dr. Merrell's Tip: Whatever your stress level during pregnancy (and it's hard to find anyone these days who doesn't have tremendous stress in their lives) it's important to cultivate a stress-reduction practice such as breath exercises, meditation or biofeedback, which can reduce the level of stress hormones circulating in the blood stream, lower blood pressure and increase feelings of well-being.