Raising Generation Pax: Peace Begins with How We Parent…From the Very Beginning - The Role of Joy in Pregnancy

The Role of Joy in Pregnancy

Cell biologist Bruce Lipton’s drumbeat of a mantra is, “At every level and every stage of development, there is either love—and with it, growth—or fear— and with it protection and a thwarting of growth.” Those cues come from the environment, or more precisely, our perception of the environment—and this is where our divine nature comes in, via what Joseph Chilton Pearce in The Biology of Transcendence calls our “glorious prefrontal cortex.” This is the hardware that runs our consciousness software, you might say. Lipton points out that, for a growing embryo or fetus, it is the mother’s perception of life, her psychological “atmosphere,” that gets downloaded as biochemical and energetic instructions about the world into which it will be born—a world in which to thrive or survive.

Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s taught that “During pregnancy, the mother’s joy and pleasure are the forces that provide her baby with perfect organs.” The latest research proves him prescient. A pregnant mother’s state of mind is her baby’s entire universe. Her depression or unremitting anxiety (not the occasional stressful days that are simply part of life) communicates to the baby that it is going to be born into a dangerous environment, and its brain cells adapt to function in an unsafe world. The implications of this for society are immense. Babies of stressed mothers develop unconscious coping and survival skills like hypervigilance and hyper-reactivity, and their neural chemical receptors designed to perceive pleasure and contentment suffer decreased sensitivity.

A vicious cycle can begin early and spiral insidiously downward as the child grows: the baby is hard to soothe, which frustrates Mom and Dad; this generates a spectrum of strong feelings within them, which further activates the baby’s heightened “antennae” for threat, makes him even more agitated, and may lead to subtle or outright neglect or abuse by exhausted, exasperated parents. With no positive interruption of this negative feedback loop, the child has limited opportunity to internalize the self-regulating capacities developed through healthy attachment; once the toddler is a “handful,” there likely are consequences to “make the child mind,” punishments whose shamebased action further thwarts peaceoriented brain development, hardwiring it instead to thrive in a threatening world. Later, the child’s “impulsivity” gets labeled, and his sense of alienation—from himself, from others, from Life—intensifies.

Thus, a pregnant mother’s joy is a fundamental prenatal “prescription” for peaceful babies—and grownups! When joy seems out of reach, it is possible to coax it towards you. Gratitude is one of the most powerful forces for wellbeing. Smile, say an inner “thank you” for some blessing in your life, breathe mindfully, invite the imagination in, dream noble qualities for your child, and envision her luminous unfolding. You may find that joy will likely surface.