Intergenerational transmission
The passing of patterns of attachment, parenting, trauma and relating from one generation to the next, through behaviour, modelling and possibly biology.
What drives it
Explains why people repeat what they swore to avoid, or flip to its exact opposite. Useful because the variable that breaks the chain is a parent's capacity to reflect coherently on their own history.
How it shows
Work
The founder who runs the company like their father's household, with loyalty tests and favourites; the manager who micromanages the way they were parented, or overcorrects and never gives hard feedback because their father was harsh.
Relationships
Parenting under stress the way one was parented ("I heard my mother's voice come out of my mouth"); choosing a partner like a parent; repeating divorce or addiction patterns.
Self
Moments when a parent's phrase comes out of your mouth, or when your reaction to a child or report feels borrowed.
What tells it apart
Repetition compulsion: Repetition compulsion is an individual's pull to recreate past situations; intergenerational transmission is a pattern across generations, which can pass by modelling with no such pull.
Earned security: Earned security is what it looks like when transmission is interrupted.
A test
Map the pattern across three generations and ask the person how they understand it; a coherent, reflective account predicts interruption.
Questions to carry
- Mapped across three generations, which pattern repeats, and how well can they tell its story?
- Which thing I swore I’d never do have I caught myself doing, or doing the exact opposite of?
How strong the research is
moderate. Transmission of attachment from parent to child is real but modest, and how it happens is only partly explained (the 'transmission gap'); epigenetic claims in humans remain preliminary.
Where it comes from
Selma Fraiberg, 1975 ('Ghosts in the nursery'); Murray Bowen, 1978; Marinus van IJzendoorn, 1995
Sources
- Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (1978)