Generational trauma is trauma that’s passed down from parents to children. It can continue to be passed down from generation to generation. Trauma is any upsetting event or experience that influences a person’s emotions and/or behavior.
- Events that can lead to generational trauma: Many different events can cause trauma that can be passed from one generation to the next. Examples include exposure to war, famine, physical or emotional abuse, separation from a parent, mental health disorders in a parent, racism, discrimination, natural disasters, and family or community violence.
- How it’s transmitted: It can be transmitted to children through the behaviors of their parents and other caregivers, like neglect or violence — also called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Generational trauma can also be transmitted from mother to her baby before it’s born through epigenetic changes that she passes on to her child, or influences in utero. More research is needed on how generational trauma is transmitted.
- Effects of generational trauma on feelings and behavior: Generational trauma can have lifelong negative effects. In children it’s associated with behavioral and emotional difficulties. In adolescents it’s linked with negative outcomes including a greater risk of depression, mental health issues related to stress, and time in prison.
- Who’s at risk: Anybody can experience generational trauma, but in the United States, there’s a higher incidence of intergenerational trauma in African American, Latinx, Asian, and American Indigenous people than in white people with European backgrounds.
- Protective influences: Positive experiences in childhood have been shown to improve children’s health as adults, even when they experienced adverse childhood events. And when parents use stress-coping strategies to manage their own difficult emotions, children can learn through their modeling. Parenting interventions that teach parents to do this can have long-lasting positive effects on children.
- Other names for generational trauma: Intergenerational trauma, transgenerational trauma, inherited trauma, historical trauma.
For a deeper understanding, explore these related articles on Relationship Smart:
- How to Break the Cycle of Generational Trauma: Expert Q&A
- Codependency in Relationships: Meaning, Signs, Stages, and More
- This is What a Toxic Relationship Feels Like: 4 Signs
- What Is Emotional Safety and How to Create It in Your Relationships
- How Reparenting Your Inner Child Helps Your Relationship
Health and science writer and founder of Relationship Smart, Stephanie believes the world of our minds is real, important, and studyable, and that our social relationships are core to our well-being — much more than we give them credit for. She created Relationship Smart to explore the endless ways our relationships affect us, and to answer all your burning questions about them with scientific rigor and sensitivity.