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THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF Parents as Genetic Engineers THE BIOLOGY BELIEF Genetic Engineers Parents as Recent research shows that children are influenced subconsciously by their parents even before birth, and that conscious parenting can produce smarter, healthier and happier babies. o doubt you've heard the seductive argument that once parents bestow their genes on their children, they take a back seat in their children's lives; parents need only refrain from abusing their children, feed and clothe them, and then wait to see where their preprogrammed genes lead them. This notion allows parents to continue with their "pre-kids lives": they can simply drop their children off at daycare and with babysitters. It's an appealing idea for busy and/or lazy parents. It's also appealing for parents who, like me, have biological children with radically dif- ferent personalities. I used to think that my daughters are different because they inherited different sets of genes from the moment of conception—a random selection process in which their mother and I had no part. After all, I thought, they grew up in the same envi- ronment (nurture), so the reason for their differences had to be nature (genes). The reality, I know now, is very different. Frontier science is confirming what mothers and enlightened fathers have known forever: that parents do matter—despite best-selling books that try to convince them otherwise. To quote Dr Thomas Verny, a pioneer in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychiatry: "Findings in the peer-reviewed literature over the course of decades establish beyond any doubt that parents have overwhelming influ- ence on the mental and physical attributes of the children they raise." (Verny and Weintraub, 2002) And that influence starts, says Verny, not after children are born but before children are born. When Verny first posited the notion that the influence of parents extends even to the womb, in his landmark book The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, the scientific evi- dence was preliminary and the "experts" sceptical. (Verny, 1981) Because scientists used to think that the human brain did not become functional until after birth, it was assumed that foetuses and infants had no memory and felt no pain. After all, noted Freud—who coined the termed "infantile amnesia"—most people do not remember anything that hap- pened to them before they were three or four years old. However, experimental psychologists and neuroscientists are demolishing the myth that infants cannot remember—or, for that matter, learn—and along with it the notion that par- ents are simply spectators in the unfolding of their children's lives. The foetal and infant nervous system has vast sensory and learning capabilities and a kind of memory that neu- roscientists call "implicit memory". Another pioneer in prenatal and perinatal psychology, David Chamberlain writes in his book The Mind of Your Newborn Baby: "The truth is, much of what we have traditionally believed about babies is false. They are not simple beings but complex and ageless— small creatures with unexpectedly large thoughts." (Chamberlain, 1988) These complex, small creatures have a pre-birth life in the womb that profoundly influences their long-term health and behaviour: "The quality of life in the womb, our temporary home before we were born, programs our susceptibility to coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and a multitude of other conditions in later life," writes Dr Peter W. Nathanielsz in Life in the Womb: The Origin of Health and Disease. (Nathanielsz, 1999) Recently, an even wider range of adult-related chronic disorders, including osteoporosis, mood disorders and psychoses, has been intimately linked to pre- and perinatal developmental influences. (Gluckman and Hanson, 2004) Recognising the role that the prenatal environment plays in creating disease forces a reconsideration of genetic determinism. Nathanielsz writes: "There is mounting evidence that programming of lifetime health by the conditions in the womb is equally, if not more, by Bruce Lipton, PhD © 2005 Website: http://www.brucelipton.com Extracted from chapter seven of his book The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles Website: http://www.brucelipton.com NEXUS * 25 CONSCIOUS PARENTING FEBRUARY — MARCH 2006 www.nexusmagazine.com