The Womb as Classroom

Due to an abundance of scientific data that has appeared in the past thirty to forty years, and thanks to the work and dedication of new parenting medical professionals around the world, it has now become increasingly clear that human education starts a good deal sooner than the moment of birth. It begins, we now know, in-utero—in the womb. Here, it flourishes even in the early days following conception. It then picks up momentum as the child grows, reaching a crescendo of cognitive and sensory development in the last trimester of pregnancy.

What is learned during this preciously critical period lodges firmly in the very depths of a child’s being. It remains there from birth to death, as deeply imprinted upon the heart and mind as a fiery brand.

Even during the first and second trimester of pregnancy, an unborn child—the prenate—starts receiving and assimilating relatively complex sensory and emotional information. Its cognitive and perceptual learning, along with the underpinnings of personality and ego formation, all progress to surprising and hitherto unsuspected levels of development. Many prenatal studies indicate that a fetus of six or seven months is capable of reasoning, if in a primitive way. Observations also demonstrate that in-womb memories function on a relatively sophisticated level. There are many other forms of prenate learning as well. During pregnancy, for example, a mother’s slumber routines exert a profound influence on the type of sleep patterns her unborn child will one day experience and on the moods and temperament her child will display as an adult. There is even evidence that a pregnant mother’s dreams may affect the quality and length of the prenate’s birth.

Of equal importance, is the fact that a child’s in womb senses, once thought to be quasi-dormant for all three trimesters of pregnancy, are capable of hearing, seeing, and touching to a far greater degree than was ever supposed. That unborn children are adept at tuning into activities both inside and outside their mother’s bodies, forming lasting impressions from the messages they receive.

Spectacularly significant is the recent discovery that in-womb learning is not simply a preprogrammed biological event that unfolds according to the ironclad commands of a child’s DNA. Genes governing health, emotions, and brainpower can also be controlled—and even changed—by the impressions a fetus receives from the outside world. Indeed, the more we learn about life in the womb, the more we learn that the genetic code is highly alterable by the degree of nurturance an unborn child receives.

The nature of these environmental impressions, as we learn from the remarkable work of biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton and others, depends to a large extent on the ways in which parents care for their in-womb child and, of almost equal importance, the ways in which they relate to one another during the course of pregnancy. Even more astonishing, there is strong scientific evidence to suggest that genetic markers are affected and altered by parents’ physical health and mental attitudes before the male sperm and female ovum actually unite—that is, before the act of fertilization takes place. Further, these parental behavior patterns can affect personality formation in the child-to-be as many as sixty days prior to conception. Finally, we now understand that the prenate’s ability to experience mood, arousal, and response to stimuli are programmed into its developing neurons and that the mother’s emotional disposition during pregnancy affects a child’s mental and physical health significantly.

During pregnancy, a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters flow from the mother into the fetus, sending subtle but notable messages to the developing child and, in the process, “firing” these neurons in ways previous generations of scientists never thought possible. If the neurons are fired in a positive way, a healthy child results; if they are turned on in a negative way, trouble looms. Certainly such concepts give new meaning to the new parenting dictum that it is never too early to begin teaching your child.

Today, scientists of new parenting have progressed far beyond the classic theory of the comatose fetus, demonstrating in clinical as well as theoretical ways that an unborn child’s learning potential encompasses far more than passive reflex and automaton-like reactivity. Sensory learning, sleep patterns, memory, and even tendencies toward peacefulness or violence are established to some degree before a child is born.