“I really got interested in intergenerational trauma during my MSW program,” says Lovie Jackson Foster, PhD, MSW, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. Perhaps one of the most visible examples of intergenerational trauma can be seen in instances of sexual abuse. Sarah Gardner, LCSW-C, director of clinical services for the Family Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, agrees: “What I focus on in the family is what happened in the grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation and how that affected the parenting in the next generation and how that affected the next generation and on and on down the line.” “Where trauma has been untreated, what is fairly common is that the untreated trauma in the parent is transmitted through the child through the attachment bond and through the messaging about self and the world, safety, and danger.”
“The people at the highest risk of trauma and those with the most difficulty working through it have experienced their own trauma but also have come from a family where there was a trauma in their parents and often in their parents’ parents,” says Stephanie Swann, PhD, LCSW, a private practitioner who owns and operates the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute. While each generation of that family may experience its own form of trauma, the first experience can be traced back decades. Intergenerational trauma affects one family. This type of trauma, called intergenerational or historical trauma, depending on its reach or scope, can affect a family, a community, or a people. Miller and her family’s story is one of many examples of how trauma does not always dissipate in its effects but rather can trickle down from generation to generation. However the effects of her mother’s experiences continue to affect Miller, Miller’s son, and potentially generations to come. Miller adds that her mother did the best that she could, and though she doesn’t say it, it’s evident that Miller has as well. “I don’t want him to hurt or experience the hurts that I have. “The other thing is that I’m often very overprotective,” she continues. “That impacts my son because I’m not available in ways he would like me to be. “I can send a note or a card or a mountain of cards.” But beyond the notes and cards, it’s difficult. “I think one of my underlying struggles is my inability to express affection in an outward way,” she says. Miller, a lawyer and codirector of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration–funded statewide Family and Consumer Network Technical Assistance Center, adds that she has begun to notice how the effects of her mother’s experiences have affected her own parenting.
“At 53, I will still ask my mother, ‘Why don’t you say you love me?’ She has a hard time expressing that.” Her mother seemed to lack the ability to be openly affectionate and still does. For a long time, I didn’t know where my mother ended and I began.” Her identity was all tied up in our successes and failures. “She had a lack of boundaries and was really heavily involved in our personal lives in a way that a parent shouldn’t be. Miller saw firsthand the effects it had on her mother as a parent. The experience of foster care left lasting impressions on Miller’s mother, aunts, and uncles. However, surviving does not mean coming away unscathed.
By the time they were adults leaving the foster care system, they were what many would call survivors. Their experiences in these placements were unimaginable, Miller says. In the 1930s and ‘40s, LaVerne Daisy Miller’s mother and her seven siblings were placed in foster care in New York City. Social workers must be aware of and detect the subtle and not-so-subtle effects on a family, a community, and a people. Multiple generations of families can transmit the damage of trauma throughout the years. Intergenerational Trauma - Legacies of Loss