ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews evolutionary ecology that help marshal what is known about prenatal influences on pregnancy, fetal development, and child outcomes into a more coherent whole. It focuses on maternal psychosocial stress and nutrition, environmental toxins, and the crucial role of placental physiology and epigenetic processes in transducing the maternal effects to the fetus, subsequent postnatal growth, development, health, and potential for intergenerational, nongenetic inheritance. The chapter examines the role maternal effects have in the interaction between development and evolution, culminating in modern epigenetics. It provides an overview of life history theory and parent-offspring conflict theory, and also focuses on the evolutionary consequences of environmental effects on the timing of life history stages. The chapter explores specific issues that are pertinent to future applied, empirical, and theoretical work in prenatal parenting. Prenatal parenting and the prenatal environment more broadly is a burgeoning field of enquiry with increasing significance for health.
