Why are you supposed to read to and talk to the baby while your pregnant?
So it won’t get bored?
Supposedly, any sort of stimulation will aid brain develpoment. I don’t buy it, and I haven’t read any reputable studies that demonstrate its effectiveness. OTOH, it doesn’t hurt anythng, and if there’s any possibility of a benefit, why not?
Try to use that for a belief in God in GD. You will get ripped to shreds.
Anyway, the baby supposedly recognizes the parents voices in the womb and this carries over to after the birth. More of a pacifier if anything.
Any frequently repeated sounds heard by the kid in utero will have a calming effect when the kid is out. I have friends whose baby is out like a light whenever he hears Welcome to the Jungle. This also works with vacuum cleaners. My older kid relaxed to anything with heavy drums in it.
No cite, just the experience of pretty much every Mom I’ve met.
So if you read Goodnight Moon every night, or sing a certain lullaby before the kid is born, after you pop, the kid will still recognize it. It gives it a familiar anchor in a world that must be bewildering to someone who’s used to a much lower level of stimulation.
HennaDancer
The most scientific reasoning I’ve found is that it may have a small influence on postnatal bonding patterns. That is, the more the mother treats the infant as an individual to whom she can relate (talking, touching, singing, etc.), the more she will be prepared to bond with and form a normal attachment pattern with the baby after birth.
The science shows a MODEST relationship between prenatal attachment and postnatal attachment.
The problem is that talking to the baby may or may not help you bond with it before birth. Just talking to it may not improve your bonding odds at all. It is more likely that women who are highly attached to start with tend to talk to the baby more. It is a logical fallacy that therefore talking to it will make you more bonded. The talking is the outcome of the existing attachment, not the cause. Not that it will hurt any, but talking to it won’t make most people feel it is more real if they don’t feel it is real to start with.
And yes, they do respond to the sounds afterwards. I can still, almost two years later, knock my younger son out by playing the tape I listened to on my commute (2-3 hours a day) every day of the last 4 1/2 months of pregnancy. Including some pretty rockin’ tunes.
Poked around some more on PubMed (I was bored).
Other research supporting prenatal attachment as a predictor of postnatal attachment.
More useful in supporting prenatal bonding are (from other research listed in PubMed when I searched for “prenatal attachment”): reassuring feedback and detailed commentary when detailed ultrasound is performed (over non-responsive or non-reassuring feedback); positive family experiences and memories (of self as child and as mother with the father especially); early reassuring test results for those using CV or Amniocentisis (knowing the fetus or infant is viable increases attachment behavior); maternally perceived supportive social network; small impact from prenatal classes of various sorts (birth prep, etc.); and parity (that is, prenatal bonding is more common, earlier, and more stable across all trimesters in women with a previous birth - BTDT, know the baby is really real…).
You get far more impact from early postnatal experience than prenatal, regarding attachment behavior. Slightly more time spent with the baby immediately after birth without anyone watching (being watched seems to suppress the usual reactions that later translate to attachment behavior), less interruption, less pain, and less threat of loss of the infant during labor tends to support normal attachment. Again, it won’t CAUSE normal attachment, but it will permit it.
Even more important perhaps is the impact of how well your own mother attached to you. There’s a strong pattern of a baby whose maternal attachment was disorganized or avoidant to have the same reaction to their own child. I think that’s in here somewhere. (that link also explains why you should care whether you’ve got a good attachment or not)
Interestingly, anxiety and previous losses do not decrease the prenatal attachment process when measured for impact on current pregnancy, but reassurance and support increase the attachment when measured for that. Kind of a ‘results reflect what you measured’ thing, there.
Oh, and support for infant response to maternal voice
Basically, there’s nothing saying you have to talk to the baby to have a good attachment after the birth.