So promising halfway through, "Womb Raider" ended up retreating to the the well-worn but threadbare fallback position of social scientists...that parenting and environment must be THE explanation for any differences we observe. It's called the "Nurture Assumption" by Harris,"The Blank Slate" by Pinker and reactionary by Mangar.

Darshak does not understand genetic influences...his assumption that "genetic" equals "immutable" is just as outdated as the nurture assumption itself. No wonder, then, that he totally misrepresents and misinterprets the IQ data from Freakonomics, dinging Levitt and Dubner for "turning to biology" because they instead of "admitting they can't capture the nuances of good child-rearing". He never entertains the possibility that the "nuances of good child-rearing" may not be where the answer lies. He just makes the classic Nurture Assumption and then assumes that, if that assumption isn't confirmed, it's just because you didn't look hard enough.

Professionals really need to start paying attention to what we've learned about population genetics. Environments make a difference, and genes make a difference. What people refuse to recognize is that genes design an organism in such a way as to constrain HOW environments affect that organism. There's no either/or in terms of individual outcomes. And when the data regarding DIFFERENCES between people get chalked up irrefutably to differences in genes (which is what "heritable" means), there's no reason to assume that we can't change the environment so that those genes produce a different (better?) organism.

So, when a mother prone to weight gain has a toddler prone to weight gain, there's no reason to think it has to be either parenting OR gestational events. What about the fact that they both share a genetic propensity towards weight gain?