Some people may be more prone to anxiety than others because they “caught” their mother’s stress in the womb, scientists claim. The team, from the Queen’s Medical Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh, has found that a component of the placenta which protects unborn babies from high levels of stress hormones in the mother’s blood is deficient in some people. Without this enzyme barrier, the foetal brain is exposed to the hormone cortisol when the mother is experiencing anxiety, potentially leading to developmental changes that affect personality.

Curiously, eating large amounts of liquorice in pregnancy may have the same effect. Professor Jonathan Seckl’s research has shown that in Finland, where liquorice is a popular treat, mothers-to-be who eat a bag a day have an increased risk of having a child with behavioural problems. He suspects that liquorice contains compounds that break down the enzyme barrier. (The Week)

Many of my contemporaries are dead now, but in life seemed constantly anxious. I noticed it because I too suffer from a high level of ambient anxiety. It so happens that I was born just months before the Second World War. My mother was a nervous person who had had a number of traumas in her life to do with family and marriage. By 1938 the realisation that there was certain to be another war, with the threat of invasion, made her very anxious. She was typical of a lot of pregnant women who remained in or around London during the blitz, with rationing, sirens going off, insufficient food and not knowing how long your life would be. In early years it is not surprising that anxiety was general. I find young people now, in general (there are bound to be exceptions) lacking that tell-tale anxiety that marked my generation. Their enzyme barriers are more healthy than the war children. That’s good news! One can do without that.