How Trauma Gets Passed Down Through Generations

[Rhea]

Historical Generational Trauma article focusing on Native Americans

“This page explores how trauma passes down from generation to generation, why it is so difficult to break free from destructive family patterns, and how people can embrace their stories in order to find healing.“


I found this to be very interesting and useful information on how the destructie behaviors that marginalized communities can display have a root and a cause that can be inherited from the trauma of the parents, grandparents and ancestors.

This is not difficult to follow, since we know that abused children often grow up to be abusers. Likewise, oppressed people can result in poor choices in their children.

 

[Trausti]

This helps explain why children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have done so poorly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yet another case showing that it's not discrimination at work.

There are real issues that need fixing (which is going to be very hard!) but pretending it's discrimination provides an easy scapegoat and supposedly puts the costs on bad guys so it doesn't matter.

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This helps explain why children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have done so poorly.

How many of those children were carried during the Holocaust, though? They're talking about ongoing stress during pregnancy, not stress prior in life.

 

[bigfield]

Yet another case showing that it's not discrimination at work.

There are real issues that need fixing (which is going to be very hard!) but pretending it's discrimination provides an easy scapegoat and supposedly puts the costs on bad guys so it doesn't matter.

I find it very hard to believe that discrimination doesn't contribute to the social problems Native Americans face.

Maybe if they passed as white they'd fare a lot better.

 

[ronburgundy]

This helps explain why children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have done so poorly.

This is likely futile, because that post smells more like troll excrement than sincere ignorance.
But here goes.
The idea clearly articulated in the OP article is that "the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over one’s lifetime and from generation to generation following loss of lives, land and vital aspects of culture.”

The Holocaust was a horrific single generation event. Half the world went to war to end that event, and then gave military and political support to it's former victims to create a homeland they could return to, and has provided military and financial support to them ever since. One of the reasons the Jews were easily scapegoated by the Nazis is that leading up to the holocaust, the Jews were doing quite well in Germany and western Europe.

Your making a false equivocation between that and centuries of extreme violent abuse, including enslavement and/or permanent elimination of a cultural/social infrastructure.

The focus of the OP is on an overlooked pathway of causal effect, mediated by stress during pregnancy.
What % of modern Jews are descended from parents who were in the womb during the holocaust? Likely, a very
small %. In contrast, what % of Native Americans and African Americans are descended from people who were in the womb at any period during the hundreds of years these groups underwent extreme trauma and elimination of their way of life and culture? The vast majority, plus they are descended from numerous generations that each were born under such conditions, compounding the negative impact with each generation.

Thus, any negative impact of the mechanism described in the OP on current generations would be expected to be exponentially greater on African Americans and Native Americans.

 

[Trausti]

This helps explain why children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have done so poorly.

This is likely futile, because that post smells more like troll excrement than sincere ignorance.
But here goes.
The idea clearly articulated in the OP article is that "the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over one’s lifetime and from generation to generation following loss of lives, land and vital aspects of culture.”

The Holocaust was a horrific single generation event. Half the world went to war to end that event, and then gave military and political support to it's former victims to create a homeland they could return to, and has provided military and financial support to them ever since. One of the reasons the Jews were easily scapegoated by the Nazis is that leading up to the holocaust, the Jews were doing quite well in Germany and western Europe.

Your making a false equivocation between that and centuries of extreme violent abuse, including enslavement and/or permanent elimination of a cultural/social infrastructure.

The focus of the OP is on an overlooked pathway of causal effect, mediated by stress during pregnancy.
What % of modern Jews are descended from parents who were in the womb during the holocaust? Likely, a very
small %. In contrast, what % of Native Americans and African Americans are descended from people who were in the womb at any period during the hundreds of years these groups underwent extreme trauma and elimination of their way of life and culture? The vast majority, plus they are descended from numerous generations that each were born under such conditions, compounding the negative impact with each generation.

Thus, any negative impact of the mechanism described in the OP on current generations would be expected to be exponentially greater on African Americans and Native Americans.

Well, this is epigentic nonsense with a dash of the blank slate. Are humans animals or not? If prior generations went through difficult times, there would be selective pressure on the traits allowing that generation to survive. Those traits would then be passed on. Ergo, having ancestors who survived the selective bottleneck would be a benefit for future generations. Take European Jews. A millennia of discrimination/pograms, prohibited from most trades save mental tasks, and confined to small ghettos. The better someone was at mental tasks the greater chance that person would survive and procreate. Hence, Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any group. Way over-represented with the Nobel prize. This notion that people carry the "trauma" of an ancestor is pseudoscience.

 

[ronburgundy]

This helps explain why children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have done so poorly.

This is likely futile, because that post smells more like troll excrement than sincere ignorance.
But here goes.
The idea clearly articulated in the OP article is that "the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over one’s lifetime and from generation to generation following loss of lives, land and vital aspects of culture.”

The Holocaust was a horrific single generation event. Half the world went to war to end that event, and then gave military and political support to it's former victims to create a homeland they could return to, and has provided military and financial support to them ever since. One of the reasons the Jews were easily scapegoated by the Nazis is that leading up to the holocaust, the Jews were doing quite well in Germany and western Europe.

Your making a false equivocation between that and centuries of extreme violent abuse, including enslavement and/or permanent elimination of a cultural/social infrastructure.

The focus of the OP is on an overlooked pathway of causal effect, mediated by stress during pregnancy.
What % of modern Jews are descended from parents who were in the womb during the holocaust? Likely, a very
small %. In contrast, what % of Native Americans and African Americans are descended from people who were in the womb at any period during the hundreds of years these groups underwent extreme trauma and elimination of their way of life and culture? The vast majority, plus they are descended from numerous generations that each were born under such conditions, compounding the negative impact with each generation.

Thus, any negative impact of the mechanism described in the OP on current generations would be expected to be exponentially greater on African Americans and Native Americans.

Well, this is epigentic nonsense with a dash of the blank slate. Are humans animals or not? If prior generations went through difficult times, there would be selective pressure on the traits allowing that generation to survive. Those traits would then be passed on. Ergo, having ancestors who survived the selective bottleneck would be a benefit for future generations. Take European Jews. A millennia of discrimination/pograms, prohibited from most trades save mental tasks, and confined to small ghettos. The better someone was at mental tasks the greater chance that person would survive and procreate. Hence, Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any group. Way over-represented with the Nobel prize. This notion that people carry the "trauma" of an ancestor is pseudoscience.

The impact of maternal stress far more established science than your armchair speculation about European Jews evolving higher IQ due to mistreatment. Several specific biological pathways are known by which maternal stress impacts fetal development via elevated levels of cytokines, cortisol, vaginal microbiota, and ROS byproducts of oxygen metabolism. These stress induced aspects of the fetal environment not only means that stressors make the child more prone to physical ailments, but impact brain development and neurogenesis in ways that make the child more prone to a number of psychological ailments, including ADHD, depression, and impaired cognitive development.
https://psychscenehub.com/psychinsights/maternal-stress-and-the-fetal-brain/
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/stress-and-pregnancy-prenatal-and-perinatal/according-experts/effects-prenatal-stress-child

There is nothing "blank slate" about it. It simply doesn't cling to your infantile overly simplistic grasp of evolution and genetics.

Also, some of these impacts could actually have had adaptive functions in evolutionary history. A child born to a mother traumatized by her environment might be more likely to survive being born into a more threatening environment by being highly anxious and easily distracted from a task (i.e., sensitive to potential threat). But those same traits are maladaptive to modern life and one's ability to learn and stay focused on the types of monotonous boring tasks that most workforce jobs require.

Contrary to your cartoonish grasp of evolution, traits do not magically go away just because they become maladaptive, especially in modern society where reproductive success has either no relation or a negative relation to things like economic success, intellectual development, emotional stability, etc.