The persistence of these relationships when controlling for measures of maternal size indicate that the mechanisms behind intergenerational effects of maternal early conditions may not be found in a simple model of maternal physical or physiological constraint and point to the need to account for other aspects of maternal phenotype associated with offspring growth such as pelvic dimensions, physiological parameters like insulin metabolism, glucocorticoid levels, hypertension or epigenetic inheritance [2,3,25,26]. This evidence concerns the gene INS and hypertensive disorder.