The positive or negative influence of parents on their offspring starts very early.
This may apply to humans too. Be careful what you say when you are expecting a baby, the embryo is listening.
"... In fact, the more parent gulls talk when handing over egg-incubation duties, the better care their offspring receive. Now, scientists have found that the chicks benefit another way: Young gulls that overhear more chatter before they hatch are more communicative themselves, and end up healthier because of it. ..."
From the abstract:
"... Here, we show how embryonic experience with vocalizations carried out by parents during nest-relief displays at incubation adaptively shapes avian offspring development, providing lasting benefits to offspring. Genetic siblings prenatally exposed to different levels of parent-parent communication showed differences in epigenetic patterns, adrenocortical responsiveness, development, and food solicitation behavior. The correspondence between prenatal acoustic experience and parental context positively influenced the nutritional status and growth rate of offspring reared by communicative parents. Offspring can thus retain strong control over their own development by gathering prenatal acoustic information about parental generosity."
Fig. 1. Diagram of the experimental setup.
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