INTRODUCTORY READING

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, ‘I’ve not told anyone else yet.’
These words point to the different ways in which a social worker needs to be able to understand human
development.
In the first three months after conception the baby can be said to be ‘taking shape’ – developing the basic
plan of a human body, including a head, arms, legs, hands and feet. In the next three months, the organs and limbs
will be developing in size, complexity and functionality; the mother can feel her baby moving, and the baby
responds to stimuli. Continuing to simplify this finely tuned and intricate process, in the next three months each
interlinked part of the tiny body will continue to grow in size, efficiency and complexity until birth, and the baby in
this period becomes increasingly able to survive outside the womb. In keeping with this simplified account, if drugs
interfere with the process in the first three months, parts of the baby may be malformed or missing; and
malnutrition is more likely to cause small size if it occurs in the final three months rather than in the earlier phases.
During pregnancy, a special enzyme in the placenta acts to block the stress hormone cortisol from
reaching the fetus (DiPietro et al., 2006 as cited in the book of Sudbery, Jhon and Whittaker, Andrew p. 7).
However, if a mother experiences intense or chronically stressful situations where she feels out of control, such as
domestic abuse or severe poverty, this can over time affect the enzyme, leading to it being less effective (Gerhardt,
2015). The result is that the baby can be flooded with stress hormones, which can lead to later difficulties. For
example, they are likely to be born more irritable and prone to crying (van der Waal et al., 2007 emotions) and the
hypothalamus (involved in memory). An amygdala that has). This is because of the effects that stress hormones have
on the baby’s amygdala (involved in had to cope with considerable stress in early life tends to react more, working
harder and growing larger. Unfortunately, this means the person is more sensitive to stress and the mechanisms for
managing the stress response are weakened. This is an important finding, but there is a danger that it can be used
as a form of ‘victim blaming’, in which mothers who experience considerable stress (such as being victims of
domestic abuse) are viewed as being responsible for their child’s difficulties. It is important to bear in mind that
there are positive aspects of later caregiving that can have a positive effect. For example, secure attachment and
positive bonding during the first year can enable a small hippocampus affected by stress to be restored to normal
volume (Buss et al., 2012; Gerhardt, 2015).
We have no words that can accurately describe the unborn baby’s experience. We know that it hears
sound, as after birth it will respond differently to pieces of music which have been played repeatedly during
pregnancy – presumably most of these sounds are the internal noises of its mother’s body and the muffled
penetration of her voice, talking, singing, shouting. In a fascinating series of observations, Piontelli (2002) found
that at the age of 5, twins were still using routines for mutual comforting which had been observed by ultrasound
when they were in the womb. And then at some point the baby will be gripped harder than it is ever likely to be
gripped again, so hard that the bones of its skull fold over each seven and fourteen hours on average, it will be
propelled in repeated shoves other. Over a period between down a narrow tube until it bursts into a noisy, bright,
colourful environment totally different from the world it has experienced previously. This shocking experience will
usually have the effect you might predict – having been massively stimulated the baby will be awake for an initial
period and then fall into a deep exhausted sleep.
Nicola
Perhaps the young woman is Nicola, pregnant with her second child, anticipating that she will leave paid
work for at least the next five or six years. She is a 26-year-old black woman who has made a good start to her
career. She and her partner have planned – to the degree that these things can be planned – that his income and some
state benefit will support the family until she goes back to work when both children are at school. She is not very
clothes-conscious, but usually looks smart in her business suit when she goes to work. She’s very busy day-to-day
with her first child – let us say a boy – but her partner, a neighbour with whom she’s close, her mother whom she
sees once or twice a week and some friends who had babies at the same time as her, are all involved in the planning
for when she has her new baby. During her first pregnancy, she had many thoughts and daydreams about how the
life of her child would turn out; she has similar thoughts now, but when asked about the future she says, ‘Oh, I just
hope everything’s going to be OK, I’m really quite stretched this time, what with work, my son Matthew, Steve’s
job and the pregnancy as well. I just hope the baby will be healthy, have ten fingers and ten toes, and we’ll get
everything sorted in time.’ What she says, of course, depends on whom she is talking to; she has a friend at work
with whom she particularly chats about her toddler and the pregnancy.
Naoko
But every pregnancy, every woman, is different. Maybe the young woman is Naoko and this is her first
baby. She was born and brought up 6,000 miles away in Japan, and is now living in the UK with Paul, whom she
met as a student. She sees her mother only once a year. Her partner’s parents are supportive, but although they are
geographically closer, their routines, expectations, standards of healthcare, religious beliefs and daily language are
all a second culture for her. English people find her rather quiet and reserved, and she still occasionally struggles to
find the word she wants. She is sometimes surprised by the behaviour of boys and girls and by the attitudes of
women where she lives.
Tia
And a social worker must be prepared to understand a myriad of different stages of development The
mother-to-be may be Tia, aged 16 and having just left a children’s home. She’s talking on the phone to Claire, the
only person she trusts. Claire is 15 and also in care. The children’s home, known as ‘Number 24’, has been Tia’s
third placement in two years, before which she lived in six foster homes. Her keyworker sometimes listens, alarmed
as she jabs her finger into her belly and says, ‘I hate it’, deliberately emphasising the word ‘it’, and continuing, ‘I
hope it’s gone when I wake up.’ She doesn’t say much at all to this worker, whom she has known for only four
months, since she left the children’s home. However, she does speak about the time she thinks she got pregnant,
which was when she stayed out all night at a friend’s squat, and felt pressurized into sex, almost without caring what
she did. The significance of the pregnancy in her life? Her ferocious displays of independence and wilfulness had
always been partly a reaction to her pervasive sense of helplessness before fate; defiant strivings to carve out some
control for herself in the midst of major events which usually seemed just to happen to her. The pregnancy was little
different. She is defiantly independent, proclaiming her competence to do whatever is required; she also has the
sneaking hope, daydream, that the baby might be the one person in the world who will really love her, who will be
hers; sometimes she is terrified of the responsibility and tasks that she hardly dares think about. At the same time, a
young woman with a ferocious temper, a short fuse, intolerance born of frustration, she is bitterly angry towards the
latest interference in her life. Underlying this is the overwhelming sense of helplessness and lack of control over
events. As earlier in her life, she feels that things are done to her, they happen without her permission, and her
attempts at effective influence repeatedly seem to dissolve into a position of impotence.
Guide Questions:
What are your observations while reading the possible scenarios in the case? What are the common
character traits in all of the 3 pregnant women? Who are the people who could have influenced the differing
perspectives of the three?