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I'm often struck by the intensity of the responsibility I feel as a mother. Every decision I make feels like one that has the potential to shift the very trajectory of my kids' lives. When it gets really intense, I remind myself that I am a huge believer in biology (maybe 70 % biology, 30 % nurture – or something like that) and the pressure weakens. Momentarily. Then I am reminded that our biology is altered every day by our environment in so many ways.

Seems shared responsibility for my kids' brain development goes all the way back to my adolescent days (which weren't all organic fruits and writing book reports) – and gets laid on my mom (in my case, my moms, since I have two) and dad and the kind of environment they provided for me. This article says that my environment in childhood may have had effects on my brain that have directly influenced the brains of my own babies, at least if you think mice brains translate to human brains. There goes that whole experimentation stage I kept writing off as just adolescent “exploration”.