Prenatal pedagogy and prenatal education: Toward a formative culture of origin

Abstract

The prenatal stage has historically been addressed by health sciences, pre- and perinatal psychology, prenatal psychopedagogy, family education, natural prenatal education, specialized associations, and diverse cultural traditions oriented toward caring for life before birth. However, its incorporation into the pedagogical field remains delayed, fragmented, and conceptually underdeveloped. This theoretical reflection aims to clarify the relationship between prenatal education and Prenatal Pedagogy through a formative convergence guided by consciousness, care, and shared responsibility. It argues that prenatal education constitutes a practical, socio-health, familial, associative, and cultural domain devoted to awareness-raising, preparation, and accompaniment, whereas Prenatal Pedagogy may be understood as an emerging scientific discipline responsible for studying, grounding, guiding, and critically examining such practices from the perspective of human formation. Through a hermeneuticargumentative approach, the article integrates psychological, socio-health, pedagogical, and epistemological contributions to show that the prenatal stage requires a broader formative understanding capable of articulating health, bonding, family, education, consciousness, and social responsibility. As a contribution, the notion of a formative culture of origin is proposed to rethink education from “minus-zero years” onward, without schooling gestation or reducing the prenatal stage to performance, stimulation, determinism, or blame. The article concludes that Prenatal Pedagogy provides epistemological, ethical, didactic, and formative criteria for guiding prenatal education, strengthening the work of its disseminators, and promoting family, educational, socio-health, and social coresponsibility toward life before birth.