Situating the Father: Strengthening Interdisciplinary Collaborations between Sociology, History and the Emerging POHaD Paradigm.

(1) Background: Albeit the main focus remains largely on mothers, in recent years Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) scientists, including epigeneticists, have started to examine how a father's environment affects disease risk in children and argued that more attention needs to be given to father's health-related behaviors for their influence on offspring at preconception (i.e., sperm health) as well as paternal lifestyle influences over the first 1000 days. This research ushers in a new paternal origins of health and disease (POHaD) paradigm and is considered a welcome equalization to the overemphasis on maternal influences. Epigeneticists are excited by the possibilities of the POHaD paradigm but are also cautious about how to interpret data and avoid biased impression of socio-biological reality. (2) Methods: We review sociological and historical literatures on the intersection of gender, food and diet across different social and historical contexts to enrich our understanding of the father; (3) Results: Sociological and historical research on family food practices and diet show that there are no "fathers" in the abstract or vacuum, but they are differently classed, racialized and exist in socially stratified situations where choices may be constrained or unavailable. This confirms that epigeneticists researching POHaD need to be cautious in interpreting paternal and maternal dietary influences on offspring health; (4) Conclusions: We suggest that interdisciplinary approach to this new paradigm, which draws on sociology, history and public health, can help provide the social and historical context for interpreting and critically understanding paternal lifestyles and influences on offspring health.

Gender Beneath the Skull: Agency, Trauma and Persisting Stereotypes in Neuroepigenetics.

Epigenetics stands in a complex relationship to issues of sex and gender. As a scientific field, it has been heavily criticized for disproportionately targeting the maternal body and reproducing deterministic views of biological sex (Kenney and Müller, 2017; Lappé, 2018; Richardson et al., 2014). And yet, it also represents the culmination of a long tradition of engaging with developmental biology as a feminist cause, because of the dispersal of the supposed 'master code' of DNA among wider cellular, organismic and ecological contexts (Keller, 1988). In this paper, we explore a number of tensions at the intersection of sex, gender and trauma that are playing out in the emerging area of neuroepigenetics - a relatively new subfield of epigenetics specifically interested in environment-brain relations through epigenetic modifications in neurons. Using qualitative interviews with leading scientists, we explore how trauma is conceptualized in neuroepigenetics, paying attention to its gendered dimensions. We address a number of concerns raised by feminist STS researchers in regard to epigenetics, and illustrate why we believe close engagement with neuroepigenetic claims, and neuroepigenetic researchers themselves, is a crucial step for social scientists interested in questions of embodiment and trauma. We argue this for three reasons: (1) Neuroepigenetic studies are recognizing the agential capacities of biological materials such as genes, neurotransmitters and methyl groups, and how they influence memory formation; (2) Neuroepigenetic conceptions of trauma are yet to be robustly coupled with social and anthropological theories of violence (Eliot, 2021; Nelson, 2021; Walby, 2013); (3) In spite of the gendered assumptions we find in neuroepigenetics, there are fruitful spaces - through collaboration - to be conceptualizing gender beyond culture-biology and nature-nurture binaries (Lock and Nguyen, 2010). To borrow Gravlee's (2009: 51) phrase, we find reason for social scientists to consider how gender is not only constructed, but how it may "become biology" via epigenetic and other biological pathways. Ultimately, we argue that a robust epigenetic methodology is one which values the integrity of expertise outside its own field, and can have an open, not empty mind to cross-disciplinary dialogue.