Part of preparing to parent is making peace with your own parenting and childhood.
By Mariel Benjamin, LCSW
None of us enter our parenting journey as a blank slate. We bring our very real, very large and very heavy baggage. If you’re anything like me, it could take up all the seats on a 757. Good, bad, ugly, or delightful, our own experiences in being raised have a huge impact on our ability to parent our children. Did we get enough love? Too much? Were we suffocated? Stifled? Pressured? Pushed? Ignored? Did anyone talk about feelings? Care about emotions? Indulge our whims? Reject our interests? It’s all part of the paper mache that is our adult self - and it all rises to the surface as we imagine ourselves in the driver's seat of our future child’s life. What a daunting task?
What is intergenerational trauma?
In the case of intergenerational trauma, we are talking about adverse experiences that happened generations before us, to family members we may never have even met. Did they face slavery, racism, genocide, or war? Were they in a family with domestic violence, alcohol abuse or the trauma of poverty? Were their experiences so profound that even generations later, our bodies are hard wired to respond to threats in a different way?
Researchers say yes, intergenerational trauma is a very real phenomenon, and to some extent exists for all of us.
Though it was first studied with Holocaust survivors, over the last decades we have increasingly come to see how marginalized and persecuted people across many continents and cultures have similar experiences to trauma. Things like how our genes are expressed (epigenetics) on a micro level, or how our body is activated by triggers in our environment. Even how we perceive and express our emotions. Do we have a higher baseline of stress? A more sensitive threat response to danger? Are we more activated or more subdued? In the case of intergenerational trauma, the chronic crisis mode may have once been necessary. Fleeing from danger was adaptive, learning to stay calm or sense fear was required. But generations later when we are still living in this heightened survival mode (also known as hypervigilance), without access to the depth of our emotions or reasoning, how do we overcome these tendencies?
How does how we were parented impact how we parent?
Do you have a “short fuse” because you were yelled at? A fear of intimate relationships because you were taught that people were dangerous? A heightened stress response or hyper vigilance around fears? Chances are these patterns are related to how you were raised, and breaking the cycle starts with you. This isn’t about blame (after all, our ancestors needing these responses and are not responsible for the trauma inflicted upon them), but instead about taking back your own power to make change in the future.
Planning to parent brings our past into a stark new reality. We have the chance to start over, to start fresh. Though we can’t alter the genetics we may share with our children, we can understand the challenges they may face and work to overcome them. This first means coming to terms with any symptoms of trauma that we can see in our own lives, and working to identify tools to help manage them. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of how to help adults manage trauma and lead meaningful lives to break the cycle for their children. So many resources exist to support trauma survivors, and there is new understanding every day in science. All of this is pointing to the very real reality that we can do this work to change the cycle. This isn’t done in a day, but bit by bit over time.
Taking stock of what we want to carry, and what we need to lose.
If you’re reading this and panicking, please don’t. Preparing for the arrival of a baby is an excellent time to begin this self-discovery journey and the work of changing generational patterns. It is a logical time to take stock and to begin, but it not a time to allow stress to paralyze you. As a place to begin today, try making a list of the qualities from your childhood that you want to replicate (for example, happy memories, meaningful lessons, general sense of love or safety) and then qualities you’d rather leave behind (for example, patterns of abuse, styles of communication, insecurity in your relationships). Read this list to your partner or co-parent and have them do one as well. Discuss how your lists match or differ, and set an intention to address one of the “leave behind” qualities as you transition to parenting. Just one. Maybe it is working on breathing techniques to avoid yelling, or sharing feelings regularly to increase communication around emotions. One step at a time.
Parenting is a journey - for parents and children - and it never ends. The beauty is in the moments of discovery, of reflection, and of repair. You’ve got this.