A man’s fertility depends more on his mother’s lifestyle than his own, research suggests. A large-scale review of factors affecting sperm production found that how a woman looks after herself in pregnancy could have a major effect on her unborn baby’s ability to father a child in adulthood. Smoking and exposure to pesticides and traffic pollution all do more harm in the first weeks of life than in the adult body, according to R ... Jump to full article >>

Middle-class women who smoke in early pregnancy do almost no harm to their unborn baby, researchers claimed last night. Only women from poorer backgrounds damage their babies by smoking, because they tend to combine it with alcohol and a poor diet. The study by the London School of Economics also casts doubt on the traditional view that smoking during early pregnancy does the most harm to the baby. If women stop smoking by the fifth month the im ... Jump to full article >>