Music and Its Effects on an Unborn Baby

Music has effected human emotions for many years. It can be a soothing therapy for a stressful day, or a non-aggressive release for pent up emotion. Music has directly affected culture, while also having a direct connection and relationship with political views at the time. With music being such a powerful force on human emotions, can it effect the emotions of an unborn baby?

Music has had a very positive effect on my life, and with the knowledge that I was going to be a father for the first time, I got to wondering what I could do to help pass my love of music to my unborn child. It had me wondering at what stage the child would be able to hear the music that I, or his/her mother, listened to. It also had me curious if the child could not only hear the music, but also recognize it, and remember it in the future. What I have found is astounding.

Hearing is the first sense that starts to develop in the embryo. It actually begins to appear in the third week of gestation and continues to develop from there. Unborn babies actually begin to be able to hear at about sixteen weeks. Then, by the 6^th month of their gestation, they can not only hear music, but also start to have a preference to the types of music they hear.

Another astonishing fact is that unborn babies have the ability to remember the music they hear. They possess the ability to not only hear the music, as I described previously, but they also have the ability to remember what music they hear in the womb for up to a year after being born.

There are plenty of studies that insist that classical music has the best effect on the unborn child. While many professionals in the field have debated this particular point, there is a general consensus that the best choice of music for the unborn is any type that the mother enjoys. Familiarity is very important to the newborn. If the mother enjoys the music, and it relaxes her, this will directly affect the unborn babies feelings about the music, and make them associate that feeling with that particular choice of music. This familiarity will carry over to the baby after birth as well.