This study addresses the notion that trauma is not merely an individual psychological experience but rather a complex process transmitted across generations through parenting styles, family dynamics, and sociocultural conditions. The concept of “generation” is first defined with reference to the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generations X, Y, Z, and Alpha. It is emphasized that socioeconomic transformations, technological advancements, and cultural shifts have profoundly influenced child-rearing practices.

Trauma is defined as a disruptive experience resulting from events that threaten an individual’s physical and psychological integrity, such as death, natural disasters, war, violence, neglect, and abuse. The concept of developmental trauma highlights that repeated or prolonged adverse experiences in early childhood provide the groundwork for serious psychopathologies in adulthood, including depression, anxiety, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Intergenerational transmission of trauma refers to the conscious or unconscious transfer of adverse experiences from parents or earlier generations to subsequent ones. Parents who were exposed to abuse or neglect in their own childhood are more likely to engage in maltreatment of their children; deficits in empathy and the adoption of violence-oriented parenting styles further reinforce this cycle of transmission. Similarly, large-scale social traumas such as war, genocide, migration, and poverty may exert their effects on second and third generations through secondary traumatization, even when these descendants did not directly experience the original events.

Psychotraumatology, as an interdisciplinary field, investigates the clinical, cultural, and social dimensions of trauma and focuses on understanding and preventing such transmission processes. Dissociative disorders and PTSD are among the most prominent psychopathologies within the literature on intergenerational trauma. The aim of modern psychotraumatology is to prevent the perpetuation of psychological trauma across generations by restructuring parenting styles and implementing early interventions that account for cultural context.