# Molly Fox: “Mothers’ Prenatal Distress Accelerates Adrenal Pubertal Development in Daughters”
**Source**: https://anthro.ucla.edu/2024/03/07/molly-fox-mothers-prenatal-distress-accelerates-adrenal-pubertal-development-in-daughters/
**Parent**: https://anthro.ucla.edu/
Human life history schedules vary, partly, because of adaptive, plastic responses to early-life conditions. Little is known about how prenatal conditions relate to puberty timing. We hypothesized that fetal exposure to adversity may induce an adaptive response in offspring maturational tempo. In a longitudinal study of 253 mother-child dyads followed for 15 years, we investigated if fetal exposure to maternal [psychological distress](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/psychological-distress "Learn more about psychological distress from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") related to children’s [adrenarche](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/adrenarche "Learn more about adrenarche from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") and gonadarche schedules, assessed by maternal and child report and by [dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prasterone-sulfate "Learn more about dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") (DHEA-S), testosterone, and [estradiol](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/diethylstilbestrol "Learn more about estradiol from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") levels. We found fetal exposure to elevated maternal prenatal psychological distress predicted earlier [adrenarche](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/adrenarche "Learn more about adrenarche from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") and higher DHEA-S levels in girls, especially first-born girls, and that associations remained after covarying indices of postnatal adversity. No associations were observed for boys or for gonadarche in girls. Adrenarche orchestrates the social-behavioral transition from juvenility to adulthood; therefore, significant findings for [adrenarche](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/adrenarche "Learn more about adrenarche from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages"), but not gonadarche, suggest that prenatal maternal distress instigates an adaptive strategy in which daughters have earlier social-behavioral maturation. The stronger effect in first-borns suggests that, in adverse conditions, it is in the mother’s adaptive interest for her daughter to hasten social maturation, but not necessarily sexual maturation, because it would prolong the duration of the daughter allomothering younger siblings. We postulate a novel evolutionary framework that human mothers may calibrate the timing of first-born daughters’ maturation in a way that optimizes their own [reproductive success](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/reproductive-success "Learn more about reproductive success from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages").
Continue reading more with the following links:
- <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453023006492?via%3Dihub>
- [UCLA Newsroom](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/pregnancy-stress-early-maturation-first-born-daughters)
- [Huffington Post article](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/first-born-daughter-study_l_65e0d429e4b005b858337e67)
- [Daily Mail](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13104891/stress-pregnancy-causes-premature-puberty-study.html) article