In a recent post in her "The Wild Side" blog, New York Times writer Olivia Judson posits an interesting -- if infuritating -- theory aboout the relationship between pregnancy weight gain and a baby's future political instincts. Judson extrapolates from a recent study linking strong conservative viewpoints with certain temperamental tendencies (strong startle reflex, etc.), and factors in reseach suggesting about obesity during pregnancy to pose this question: does the obesity epidemic, in which up to one third of all pregnant women are now obese, portend a new generation of conservatives? As Judson writes, "the study found that people who support warrantless
searches, wiretapping, military spending and so on were also likely to
startle at sudden noises and threatening images. Those who support
foreign aid, immigration, gun control and the like tended to have much
milder responses to the stimuli."
Pregnant women who are obese during pregnancy -- the article leaves it somewhat unclear as to whether this includes only women who go into pregnancy obese, or also those who gain a lot of weight during pregnancy -- provide their fetuses a different hormonal environment than those who carry a typical amount of weight during pregnancy. And, Judson suggests, those hormonal differences can produce children who are jumpier, more intense, and therefore more likely to tend toward strong conservative political viewpoints into adulthood.
Of course, it's studies like this that tend to drive pregnant women of all political persuasions nuts. As if we needed another reason to worry about how much weight we've gained! As a mother who gained nearly 60 pounds with one pregnancy, and only about 35 with the other, I worry that I may have unwittingly spawned siblings whose votes will cancel each other out.
On the other hand what's fascinating to me about this idea is that it
begins to acknowledge the role that environment -- not post-birth, but
pre-birth -- might play in how a child grows. As a woman who has always
taken pregnancy to be the best possible excuse to treat myself
extremely well, I find that idea empowering. Knowing that my own mother was extremely slim throughout her child-bearing years (including modest 20-pound weight gains with each of her three pregnancies), I feel relieved that my brothers and I are all voting the same way this (and apparently every) election. Just looking at my family -- all of us politically liberal, but also all of us jumpy and intense -- makes me question pretty much every bit of Judson's conclusions.
