ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 8, the Transcending Trauma Project (TTP) found that in the interviews, the impact of parental trauma critically influenced children’s development and lives in later adulthood by affecting their overall coping and sense of physical and emotional well-being. The extensive analysis of relationships between parents and children and how these relationships had an impact on the transmission of trauma yielded three groupings of qualitative family relationships. Survivor families with predominantly negative relationships tended to display emotional difficulties in the second generation. Survivor families with predominantly positive relationships led to greater psychological health in the second generation. Families with mixed patterns of positive and negative relationship qualities between both parents and children resulted in a complex interplay of positive qualities and emotional difficulties for the children. A smaller, fourth group of families revealed a different pattern. In these families, the healthier parent was successful in mediating the negative impact of the emotionally distressed parent on the children. The children who experienced this successful mediation reported that the angry or depressed 174parent had a relatively limited adverse effect on their lives. They described in great detail the positive impact of the mediating parent on their success as adults.
