Maternal Bodies in the Postgenomic Order: Gender and the Explanatory Landscape of Epigenetics

This essay analyzes how maternal bodies are situated and valenced within the field of epigenetics. Epigenetics, the study of how experiences, environments, and exposures alter gene expression, is a vibrant new area of postgenomic life sciences research. Epigenetic research on maternal effects advances a model of human inheritance and development in which the wider social and physical environment can be seen as heritable and as a determinate of future biomedical outcomes via discrete biochemical modifications introduced by the amplifying vector of the maternal body. As an epigenetic vector, the maternal body is at once a background element, a medium for the fetus. Yet it is also a “critical” developmental context in which environmental exposures are amplified, cues are transmitted, and genes are programmed. Epigenetics research situates the maternal body as a central site of epigenetic programming and transmission, and as a significant locus of medical and public health intervention. Reflection on epigenetics-based biomedical and public health interventions recommended by leading scientists suggests a need for sensitivity to how certain bodies or spaces become intensive targets of intervention when conceptualized as amplifying vectors of risk within the explanatory landscape of epigenetics.