by Danielle Lemay
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| Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021 |
Study Suggests Maternal Stress Inherited
like passing down green eyes or curly hair.
It’s not like passing down green eyes or hair;
the scientists conducted studies with worms.
Scientists studied heat stress in worms,
so what does it matter to human mothers?
Does it matter to human mothers
that they will now be blamed for stress?
We know the moms will now be blamed for stress;
Of course. News stories manipulate us.
Of course, news stories manipulate us.
We learn from the world, starting with mom.
Perhaps we should calm the world, starting with mom.
Studies suggest maternal stress is inherited.
Author’s Note: I came across this story about heritable stress at the end of the work day, while I was quite stressed, and it made me think how I’ve probably passed stress to my children and how my mom was stressed and her mother before her, a whole lineage of stressed mothers, probably for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, or even worms. With each generation sharing stress with the next, like lines from one couplet to another in a duplex, I obviously had to write a duplex.
Danielle Lemay is a scientist and poet. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.