This book examines the complex impact of prenatal stress and the mechanismof its transmission on childrens development and well-being, including prenatalprogramming, epigenetics, infl ammatory processes, and the brain-gut microbiome.It analyzes current findings on prenatal stressors affecting pregnancy, includingpreconception stress, prenatal maternal depression, anxiety, and pregnancy-specificanxieties. Chapters explore how prenatal stress affects cognitive, affective, behavioral,and neurobiological development in children while pinpointing core processes ofadaptation, resilience, and interventions that may reduce negative behaviors andpromote optimal outcomes in children. Th is complex perspective on mechanismsby which early environmental influences interact with prenatal programming ofsusceptibility aims to inform clinical strategies and future research targeting prenatalstress and its cyclical impact on subsequent generations.

Key areas of coverage include:

• The developmental effects of prenatal maternal stress on children.
• Epigenetic effects of prenatal stress.
• Intergenerational transmission of parental early life stress.
• The microbiome-gut-brain axis and the effects of prenatal stress on earlyneurodevelopment.
• The effect of prenatal stress on parenting.
• Gestational stress and resilience.
• Prenatal stress and childrens sleeping behavior.
• Prenatal, perinatal, and population-based interventions to preventpsychopathology.

Prenatal Stress and Child Development is an essential resource for researchers, professorsand graduate students as well as clinicians, therapists, and related professionals ininfancy and early childhood development, maternal and child health, developmentalpsychology, pediatrics, social work, child and adolescent psychiatry, developmentalneuroscience, and related behavioral and social sciences and medical disciplines.

Excerpt from the foreword:

I would make the plea that in addition to anyone with an interest in child development, this book should be essential reading for researchers pursuing pre-clinical, basic science models of neurodevelopment and brain health.This book provides what in my mind is the most advanced compilation of existing knowledge and state-of-the-art science in the field of prenatal psychiatry/psychology (and perhaps in the entire field of prenatal medicine). This volume can brilliantly serve to focus future directions in our understanding of the perinatal determinants of brain health.Michael J Meaney

James McGill Professor of Medicine

Translational Neuroscience Programme

Adjunct Professor of Paediatrics