What an Unborn Child Knows

RECENT research confirms that an unborn fetus is affected by much more than its mother’s diet, the drugs she may use, or whether she smokes or not. The fetus also hears what its mother listens to and is evidently affected.

To illustrate: The music director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada, reported that when he was younger, various scores of music he was rehearsing seemed strangely familiar, although he had never seen them before. It was always the cello part that had this mysterious familiarity. He told his mother, a professional cellist, about this. When, at her inquiry, he told her the names of the musical works he was rehearsing, the mystery was solved. While she was pregnant with him, she explained, these were the very pieces she had been rehearsing!

Now, according to newspaper columnist Erma Bombeck, a British medical journal reports regarding a problem that the journal calls “fetal soap addiction.” Unborn babies are becoming addicted to the TV soap operas their mothers listen to. “I wish I had known this when I was carrying my children,” Bombeck observes. “I’d have glued myself in front of ‘The Waltons,’” a wholesome television program of some years ago. She adds: “No wonder we have children who want their ears pierced at age 2, date at 9 and get their own apartment at 13.”