Reviewed by:

• The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects (2021) by Sarah Richardson
• Quill Kukla

I had been eagerly anticipating the release of Sarah Richardson's meticulously researched The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects (2021) for several years, and I was not disappointed. A leading feminist scholar of the history and philosophy of science, Richardson traces the scientific history of the idea that pregnant people's bodies control the future health, character, and well-being of their offspring. She also explores how this science is translated into social messaging and shaped by social ideology. Richardson delves into the details of the methodology, motivations, results, and communication of the science of maternal influences. She reveals a history of shaky results, contested methods, and socially loaded messaging, unified by a sustained interest in framing maternal bodies as sites of risk and responsibility for birth outcomes.

A central narrative of the book is that the perceived location and mechanism through which pregnant bodies control fetal development keeps shifting around; over time, scientists have located this maternal influence in the uterine environment, the cytoplasm, the methylation of DNA, maternal nutrition, and even in the emotions, thoughts, and imagination of the mother, among other locations.¹ Each time a version of the maternal influence hypothesis re-emerges, targeting a different bodily location and mechanism, it comes along with similar social messaging: pregnant people are distinctively responsible for the 'quality' of their children; their bodies are distinctive sites of risk, in need of social management; and their influence can be understood and controlled independent of the context in which they live. Given how many times this scientific hypothesis and its accompanying social messaging has died and been reborn, it is hard not to conclude, with Richardson, that background ideology compels us to keep searching for new stories that take this same form.

The idea that pregnant people's bodies are understood as decontextualized and heightened sites of risk and responsibility for birth outcomes, in need of systematic discipline (both self-discipline and social discipline) in order to ensure their production of proper offspring, is one that has been explored [End Page e-1] in quite a bit of depth within feminist theory and reproductive ethics over the last thirty years. To name just a few, Barbara Duden's Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn (1993), Deborah Lupton's "Risk and the Ontology of Pregnant Embodiment" (1999), Lisa Mitchell's Baby's First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects (2001), and my own Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers' Bodies (2005) are all works firmly within this tradition. What is new about Richardson's book is not the development and exploration of this cultural narrative and imaginary, but rather her rigorous and skillful analysis of the science that has grown out of and undergirded it. Richardson is a masterful writer, who makes scientific details comprehensible and fascinating. Her historical and epistemological analyses of exactly what shaped the science at each stage, what each scientific iteration did and didn't manage to show, and how these different scientific movements were translated into public messaging, is sharp and compelling. Richardson shows us the inner workings of how scientific programs build momentum; how scientists make methodological decisions; and how results feed into ongoing research programs. From this book, we also develop a rich sense of just how much uncertainty is baked into the science of human development, and how both scientific and public excitement about a given research program are mostly independent of the success and security of the science that comes out of it.

The book traces 150 years of the history of the science of maternal influences, culminating in the current focus on epigenetics—which, like various past maternal influence theories, has ignited our broader social imagination. Epigenetics, roughly, is the study of molecular changes outside our DNA that control how genes express themselves. Environmental stimuli (such as stress) can cause changes in methylation, and thereby influence the expression of the genome: "Epigenetic markers that help determine whether a...

审阅者：

• 母体印记：母胎效应有争议的科学 (2021)莎拉·理查森 (Sarah Richardson )
• 奎尔·库克拉

我一直热切期待莎拉·理查森精心研究的《母体印记：母胎效应有争议的科学》一书的出版（2021）好几年了，我并没有失望。理查森是科学史和科学哲学方面著名的女权主义学者，她追溯了“孕妇的身体控制着后代未来的健康、性格和福祉”这一观点的科学史。她还探讨了这门科学如何转化为社会信息并由社会意识形态塑造。理查森深入研究了母性影响科学的方法、动机、结果和传播的细节。她揭示了不稳定的结果、有争议的方法和社会负载信息的历史，这些都与将母亲的身体视为出生结果的风险和责任场所的持续兴趣结合在一起。

这本书的一个中心叙述是，孕妇身体控制胎儿发育的感知位置和机制不断变化。随着时间的推移，科学家们在子宫环境、细胞质、DNA 甲基化、母体营养，甚至母亲的情绪、思想和想象力等位置中找到了这种母体影响。¹每当母性影响假说的一个版本重新出现，针对不同的身体位置和机制时，它都会伴随着类似的社会信息：怀孕的人对其孩子的“质量”负有独特的责任；他们的身体是独特的风险场所，需要社会管理；他们的影响力可以独立于他们生活的环境而被理解和控制。考虑到这一科学假设及其伴随的社会信息已经消亡又重生了多少次，我们很难不和理查森一起得出这样的结论：背景意识形态迫使我们继续寻找采用同样形式的新故事。

孕妇的身体被理解为对出生结果来说是脱节的、高风险和责任的场所，需要系统的纪律（自律和社会纪律）以确保其产生适当的后代，这一观点已被广泛接受。在过去的三十年里，我们对女权主义理论和生殖伦理学进行了相当深入的探索[尾页e-1] 。仅举几例，芭芭拉·杜登（Barbara Duden）的《脱离身体的女性：对怀孕和未出生的人的看法》（1993），黛博拉·勒普顿（Deborah Lupton）的“怀孕实施的风险和本体论”（1999），丽莎·米切尔（Lisa Mitchell）的《婴儿的第一张图片：超声波和胎儿主题的政治》（ 2001），以及我自己的集体歇斯底里：医学，文化，(2005) 都是坚定地遵循这一传统的作品。理查森的书的新颖之处不是对这种文化叙事和想象的发展和探索，而是她对从中产生并支撑它的科学进行了严格而熟练的分析。理查森是一位出色的作家，他使科学细节变得易于理解且引人入胜。她对科学在每个阶段的具体形成因素、每次科学迭代做了什么和没有成功展示什么，以及这些不同的科学运动如何转化为公共信息进行了历史和认识论的分析，这些分析是尖锐和引人注目的。理查森向我们展示了科学项目如何建立动力的内部运作方式；科学家如何做出方法论决策；以及结果如何融入正在进行的研究项目。从这本书中，

这本书追溯了 150 年母性影响科学的历史，最终导致了当前对表观遗传学的关注——与过去的各种母性影响理论一样，它激发了我们更广泛的社会想象力。粗略地说，表观遗传学是对 DNA 外部控制基因表达方式的分子变化的研究。环境刺激（例如压力）可以引起甲基化的变化，从而影响基因组的表达：“表观遗传标记有助于确定...