Psychology

Stress in the prenatal stage has been considered to be closely related to the neonatal behaviors and irritability in humans as well as in other lower animals as documented by researches done in the last thirty years. Most recent researches suggest that prenatal stress would feminize or demasculinize the male sexual behaviors while it could reduce fertility or fecundity in women. It would cause such disorders as problematic estrous cycle, vaginal bleeding, spontaneous abortion or increase in neonatal mortality. A mechanism under which stress is passed on to the offspring by the mother is an ongoing research. The studies are concentrated on the blood exchange between the mother and the fetus, as well as on the alterations of hormones in the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonads, adrenals as well as in the brains catecholamine (Emack, Kostaki, Walker,  Matthews, 2008).

Recent documented studies have suggested expectant mothers with high levels of stress and anxiety would be at highest risk of experiencing spontaneous abortions. They further risk experiencing preterm labor as well as delivering malformed or dwarf babies. The babies born of such mothers may have reduced brain circumference as well. Henry and Witt (2006) contend that although there is no conclusive study relating these long-term disorders in offspring to the prenatal stress exposures, retrospective researches have claimed that there could be a possibility. The long-term functional defects may later affect the reproductive behaviors of the offspring.

Contemporary human studies have illustrated a linkage between the negative reproductive attitudes and the increase in levels of congenital disorders as well as infant mortalities. Severe cases of psychological stress would lead to most neonatal deaths and may further cause neurological impairments of the baby. Anxieties during pregnancies would further be linked to most adulthood psychiatric problems (Herrenkohl, 1986).

There are studies testing the maternal exposures to resveratrol during lactation period and subsequent effects on the behavior, reproductive development as well as brain morphology in adult offspring. During adulthood, those females who are exposed to resveratrol during nursing showed a reduced body size and increased ovarian size, but had a normal estrous cycle as well as sociosexual behavior. There were no changes in the sexual dimorphic nucleus volume as found in the preoptic area nor the volume of anteroventral periventricular nucleus as found in the hypothalamus. On the other hand, when adult males are exposed to the resverotral, there was a great loss of weight and testosterone concentration but increased in testicles weight and reduced sociosexual patterns (Emack, Kostaki, Walker,  Matthews, 2008). The finding from this study demonstrated that postnatal exposure to resverotral may influence the estrogenic activities of some peripheral tissues like the gonads while causing antiestrogenic effects in the hypothalamus (Herrenkohl, 1986).

Maternal anxiety during pregnancies may cause an impaired behavioral and psychological development as well as affective disorders in offspring. This is further worsened when the mother has a poor socioeconomic status. Chronic stress during pregnancies may as well have great effects on the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal performance and behavior (Herrenkohl 1983).

There is also a linkage between early developmental stress and future sexual behavior of the offspring. Environment may sometimes cause stress to the new born which may greatly impact on hisher development resulting into poor reproductive success in future. It is therefore suggested that environmental conditions especially experienced in early development, may cause trans-generational failures in reproductive behaviors of humans (Mulder et al, 2002).

Conclusion
More research is needed to unearth the linkage between stress and reproductive behaviors of humans. Perhaps data from both human and animals studies may shed more light on the etiology and mechanisms relating to the prenatal-stress causing reproductive malfunctions as well as to explain other types of human psychopathology.