Children whose mothers suffered unhealed childhood trauma often struggle with 3 things as adults
Generational trauma has been a buzzword for a few years now, as more and more adults learn that the origins of some of their own mental health issues might go back much further than their own childhoods. It’s a notion supported by plenty of scientific data, and now a new study may shed more light on how this connection between a parent’s past trauma and a child’s upbringing might manifest.
Psychologists and other scientists have studied for years how trauma can be passed down, and much of the science has shown that it goes well beyond repeating our parents’ mistakes, as we all thought.
Studies have shown that trauma experienced during pregnancy impacts the fetus in ways that are predictive of everything from poor life outcomes to mental illness. Even more fascinating, epigenetics shows that trauma can change our genes in ways that can be passed down through generations in our DNA.
Studies have shown, for example, that children of Holocaust survivors have epigenetic changes in a stress-related gene, even though they never experienced those events themselves, and are often several generations removed from them.
A Canadian study further showed how trauma goes far beyond simply experiencing the traumatic events themselves. The study followed 501 Canadian families from the age of 2 months to the age of 5 of their children. All mothers reported experiencing childhood trauma listed as “ACEs,” or adverse childhood experiences that are predictive of poor life outcomes and mental health problems. The list includes everything from parental divorce to physical or intimate violence.
The study found that maternal childhood trauma was primarily linked to socioeconomic status and how attentive and responsive mothers were to the needs of their children. The traumatized mothers in the study tended to be poorer and less sensitive overall.
Speaking anecdotally as the child of a mom like this, the latter is often a result of the former. Regardless, poverty itself is on the ACE list, and low attunement and sensitivity can be a form of neglect, which is also on the ACE list. So it’s easy to understand why this affects children so much.
Children raised by traumatized mothers often struggle with these things as adults:
1. They may be more prone to anxiety and depression
This is certainly no surprise. Children whose parents suffer from anxiety and depression are much more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression themselves. And given that financial hardship alone is decisively linked to anxiety and depression, not to mention childhood trauma, it’s no surprise that many of the mothers in the study suffered from these conditions, as did their children.
Another unsurprising but important finding: Mothers’ rates of depression were also linked to their children’s fathers’ histories of what the study called “conduct problems.” Fathers’ negative behaviors strengthened the link between maternal anxiety and depression and the same conditions in children.
2. An aversion to following the rules
The study found a strong link between mothers’ lower sensitivity and children who were aggressive or rule-breaking, and an even stronger link between these behaviors and relationship conflicts among the children’s parents, themselves strongly linked to maternal trauma.
But again, fathers had a major influence. A father’s behavioral problems as a child were linked to his own children’s problems. We can infer that this was also related to the observed marital discord, although the study did not examine it specifically.
3. They might struggle with academics
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The end result observed was cognitive difficulties in children, particularly in terms of vocabulary and mathematics. Scientists found that mothers’ level of sensitivity was the most important factor and led to low skill test scores for their children. This is, of course, consistent with the wealth of data showing that childhood adversity directly affects learning and academic achievement.
Overall, the study authors say their findings align with what’s called the “interactionist model” of child development. This is a kind of trickle-down effect that scientists call a “risk cascade.” Trauma impacts mothers’ mental health, socioeconomic status, and marital relationships, which impacts their ability to meet their children’s emotional needs, which in turn impacts their children’s development.
And while one of the study’s limitations is the lack of in-depth examination of fathers’ impacts on all of this, it nevertheless once again confirms that we should view trauma not as discrete events that happen to a single person, but as events with far-reaching impacts. It also gives even more credence to the importance of the mental health work being done by so many younger generations these days. This work not only affects the past and present, but also the future.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. It covers topics related to culture, mental health and human interests.
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