I agree, (mis)education is one way how we inherit trauma. Being a parent is something generally learned from your parents (based on how you were raised), with

I agree, (mis)education is one way how we inherit trauma. Being a parent is something generally learned from your parents (based on how you were raised), with maybe a bit of advice from books/tv/friends. A parent with a traumatic past/upbringing can easily bring that into the situation of the present with their raising of their own children, effectively "passing it on" to a new generation. These "lessons" can be very subtle because like many things learned as very young children (a lot of that through mimicry and observing your parents), people tend to take them for granted without question (until something comes up to make you consciously question it). For example, the people that think it's fine to hit their children or yell at them because "that's what their parents did." Parenting is one of those seemingly crucial skills that is hard to learn, doesn't take a license, everyone is thrown into without practice for their first child, and can radically affect how children grow and develop. This of course is both personal anecdata, having talked to a lot of people, and reading a fair amount of books on childhood trauma. It's a hard field to get hard scientific research on, since it's not really ethical to do that kind of research on children, but here's a recent paper of interest: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180709101155.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180709101155.h... "Parents who lived through adverse childhood experiences were more likely to report higher levels of aggravation as parents and to experience mental health problems, the researchers found. However, these mental health and attitude factors only explained about a quarter of the association to their child's elevated behavioral health risks. The remainder of how the parent's adverse childhood experiences are transmitted to their child's behavior deserves further study." So maybe epigenetics are one of these other ways things get transmitted. But I think it's a lot easier to study because it's easier to measure than something like childhood experience. Even children can't be expected to remember what really happened.