RE: Does the Battle of the Sexes Begin in the Womb?

Oh, I can remember the same, of course the fetus uses the mother as a resource. I had bleeding gums all the time during pregnancy and aweful heartburn. But again I had a radiant soft skin, my hair was shiny and healthy like never before, etc.

It is not quite right in my eyes that the fetus exhausts the mother as far as the nutrition of the mother tries to balance the substances that are taken from her and carried into the placenta for nutritional value. That is why I think that the typical appetite for other foods than what one usually knows from oneself comes. So I ate lamb with great preference during my pregnancy, but have never touched it again since then, because I cannot stand the taste.
But it tasted great at that time and I had a lot of pleasure with it. I don't think much of such one-sided cause-effects, most of the time it is much more complex.

Nevertheless it's interesting to read your article, but I thought it had something completely different to do with the fact that this imprinting of the father's genes was something else. ... Anyway, thank you for the memories of the pregnancy. ... Oh... were there differences in food preferences as you have a boy and a girl?

When I wrote this, I was actually more interested in the role environment has on inheritance and development. I think that is a pressing concern, something we can affect through policy. Genomic imprinting (epigenetics) offers a great opportunity to separate genetic destiny from external influences. This blog would have been far too long if I explored that, but this is where I am going. This has implications not only for social policy but also for health--all kinds of diseases (metabolic, psychological, cancers) have been associated with mistakes in methylation. Anyway, the battle of the sexes was just a hook :)

During my pregnancies I was hungry all the time. I ate well but wisely. Carried fruit around with me to stave off cravings. I was quite an omnivore :)

I think that your description of diet during pregnancy makes a good point: we don't have scarcity of food resources. We don't have to worry about rationing because we have abundance. Maybe this system of limiting the growth of the fetus evolved in a time of scarcer resources, when we were hunter gatherers and food supply was not certain. Just a thought....

I see you have a post! Look forward to reading it!