– What is inter-generational trauma, and how could people who have never experienced a conflict be affected by it via their parents?
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Basically it’s the idea that how you will raise your children is entirely dependent on how you were raised and that you are beholden to a system of oppression for eternity and that nothing you do will ever change that. It creates an easy scape goat for people who don’t want to actually improve their lives and can just blame the “system” for all their pathological human traits.
This idea is deeply entrenched in the unconstrained vision, and it fundamentally preaches that humans are inherently good, and it’s the systems they inhabit that cause them to take on bigotry, malous, sloth, etc. If only the systems were torn down and new ones created, then all humans will suddenly become generous, benevolent, and productive. To me that’s an insane idea and it has no real world benefits and only leads to muderousness. I opposite it wherever it lies.
Another example: Vietnam veterans with untreated PTSD and the effects on their children. It’s basically like being raised by an unpredictable and sometimes raging alcoholic, but without the alcohol.
Hurt people hurt people. Intergenerational trauma that is passed down to other members of the group. It causes people to ignore things or cover up problems.
Native Americans deal with intergenerational trauma in ways it is hard to understand. People go missing without a report to law enforcement ; sometimes it is explained away as drinking or working. A distrust of the government is Intergenerational trauma. Tribes have low employment, low educational attainment, high rates of poverty. This is from Intergenerational trauma.
May 5, is missing and murdered indigenous peoples day. Native Americans deal with intergenerational trauma
Biochemist here. One of the big emerging fields in Genetics is the study of epigenetics. Epigenetics are multi-generational changes in gene expression as a result of environmental influences. In short, your DNA today is demonstrably different because your grandmother went hungry during the great depression.
Environmental stress, emotional stress, poverty, malnutrition, and many other factors can cause epigenetic changes to your DNA. On a physical, genetic level environmental factors change gene expression.
These aren’t changes to the genetic sequences themselves, but are little tags placed on the DNA that changes how often it is read. These changes, called methylations, fade away after 3-4 generations.
On this subject, what is happening today is that young parents, born before 2000, tend today to overprotect their children, as if they defended them against everything and everyone, as if they had suffered some trauma, which leads this current new generation to be called “the crystal generation” which isolates them from the real world and leads them to collide with it when they have than facing usual situations in their social life, which causes frustration, anxiety or depression and they only feel safe in their room.
This is a real current problem.
Here’s an example: A woman is abused by a man. She has a daughter and raises her daughter to avoid men, that men are bad, etc. That daughter might not be able to have a good relationship with men because of it.
Another example: A person was beaten as a child for misbehaving. That person never learns how to manage their own feelings or communicate properly because nobody in their life did it while they were growing up. That person has a child and doesn’t know how to teach the child to behave, so they beat their child. The cycle continues.
The concept of intergenerational trauma is that an individual experiences trauma and behaves in a certain way because of it. That behavior then affects their children, which also causes it’s own type of trauma.
In short, because traumatized parents have emotional difficulties that affect how they raise their children.
Trust and intimacy issues from their own abusive upbringing can echo down the chain for generations, giving their children issues with understanding and expressing emotion, or forming healthy relationships of their own.
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