HM8 - Mendel versus Mommy: Debates over Maternal–Fetal Influence in Twentieth Century China
SCURS Disciplines
History
Document Type
General Presentation (Oral)
Invited Presentation Choice
Not Applicable
Abstract
What does a mother pass on to her fetus? Can she transform the fetus that she carries, or is its nature already set at the time of conception? By the turn of the twentieth century, debates over maternal influence raged globally. August Weismann’s new theory of sex equality in heredity and his assertion that the germ plasm hidden within reproductive cells was sealed off from the outside world challenged both preexisting folk and medical assumptions about maternal–fetal influence and Lamarckian evolutionary theories about the heritability of acquired characteristics. In response, Chinese intellectuals brought their own contemporary concerns and medical assumptions into the debate.
As China grappled with imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, intellectuals and popular medical writers alike called on women to return to the ancient practice of fetal education to save the nation by strengthening the Chinese race in utero. Fetal education drew upon both a Confucian belief in the perfectibility of human nature and classical Chinese medical theories about environmental influences on human health, calling upon pregnant mothers to regulate their body, emotions, behavior, and environment to improve the fetus. By the 1920s, however, global medical and scientific communities rejected earlier beliefs in maternal influence in favor of genetics and Weismann’s paradigm of the fetus as sealed from the outside world. In China, the prominent American-educated eugenicist Pan Guangdan denounced fetal education as superstitious and dysgenic, and argued that genetics alone could determine a child’s nature, challenging longstanding cultural and medical beliefs.
Keywords
fetus, maternal influence, China, eugenics, Pan Guangdan
Start Date
10-4-2026 4:25 PM
Location
CASB 104
End Date
10-4-2026 4:40 PM
HM8 - Mendel versus Mommy: Debates over Maternal–Fetal Influence in Twentieth Century China
CASB 104
What does a mother pass on to her fetus? Can she transform the fetus that she carries, or is its nature already set at the time of conception? By the turn of the twentieth century, debates over maternal influence raged globally. August Weismann’s new theory of sex equality in heredity and his assertion that the germ plasm hidden within reproductive cells was sealed off from the outside world challenged both preexisting folk and medical assumptions about maternal–fetal influence and Lamarckian evolutionary theories about the heritability of acquired characteristics. In response, Chinese intellectuals brought their own contemporary concerns and medical assumptions into the debate.
As China grappled with imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, intellectuals and popular medical writers alike called on women to return to the ancient practice of fetal education to save the nation by strengthening the Chinese race in utero. Fetal education drew upon both a Confucian belief in the perfectibility of human nature and classical Chinese medical theories about environmental influences on human health, calling upon pregnant mothers to regulate their body, emotions, behavior, and environment to improve the fetus. By the 1920s, however, global medical and scientific communities rejected earlier beliefs in maternal influence in favor of genetics and Weismann’s paradigm of the fetus as sealed from the outside world. In China, the prominent American-educated eugenicist Pan Guangdan denounced fetal education as superstitious and dysgenic, and argued that genetics alone could determine a child’s nature, challenging longstanding cultural and medical beliefs.