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Annual Review of Developmental Psychology

Volume 6, 2024

Prenatal Stress and Maternal Role in Neurodevelopment

  • Moriah E. Thomason1,2 and Cassandra L. Hendrix1
  • 1Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA; email: [email protected] 2Department of Population Health and Neuroscience Institute, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
  • Vol. 6:87-107 (Volume publication date December 2024)
  • First published as a Review in Advance on September 11, 2024
  • Copyright © 2024 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

This review summarizes recent findings on stress-related programming of brain development in utero, with an emphasis on situating findings within the mothers’ broader psychosocial experiences. Meta-analyses of observational studies on prenatal stress exposure indicate that the direction and size of effects on child neurodevelopment are heterogeneous across studies. Inspired by lifespan and topological frameworks of adversity, we conceptualize individual variation in mothers’ lived experience during and prior to pregnancy as a key determinant of these heterogeneous effects across populations. We structure our review to discuss experiential categories that may uniquely shape the psychological and biological influence of stress on pregnant mothers and their developing children, including current socioeconomic resources, exposure to chronic and traumatic stressors, culture and historical trauma, and the contours of prenatal stress itself. We conclude by identifying next steps that hold potential to meaningfully advance the field of fetal programming.

Keyword(s): adversity, fetal programming, individual differences, intergenerational transmission, stress neurobiology
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2024-12-09
2025-06-17
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Prenatal Stress and Maternal Role in Neurodevelopment
Annual Review of Developmental Psychology 6, 87 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120321-011905
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120321-011905
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120321-011905
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