This has sort of already begun--I have anecdotally seen some folks argue that the epigenetic effects of trauma are passed down to offspring...which makes no sense to me, because my understanding is that gene expression is not inherited, so those effects would be "washed clean," so to speak, in the next generation. I cannot now remember the person or context, but I saw someone cite a study on how children of mothers who underwent a major famine (maybe the Holodomor?) were more likely to be obese than children of mothers who did not undergo famine. This person's argument was essentially that they inherited the "trauma" of starvation genetically and thus their genes expression was such that they craved more fattening foods and/or their body metabolized calories more slowly to prevent starvation. And in my mind I'm just like: "Or, you know, much more plausible is the notion that mothers who underwent famine simply fed their kids more food to prevent their kids from starving to death." Idk, seems really far-fetched to me to argue that trauma effects are genetically inherited. Epigenetic effects are absolutely a thing, but I have always understood them as happening on the individual level and being mostly wiped clean from generation to generation. And I don't deny that people who learn maladaptive behaviors will then likely perpetuate those behaviors by teaching them to offspring--but, again, "intergenerational trauma" seems like such a suspect term to me. Perhaps others here can correct me if my understandings are not accurate.
