The Echoes of Intergenerational Trauma: Navigating Intimate Relationships in Adulthood

Have you ever wondered why some people struggle to fully open up to close friends or partners, even when they really want to? Our ability to explore and build such trust and intimacy with others does not develop in isolation. Rather, it is shaped long before our first relationship, influenced by our own childhood experiences and early environments.

Yet, for many second-generation immigrants, it is not only their own experiences that shape their emotional reality, but also those of their parents. Alongside cultural values and traditional practices, second-generation immigrants may also inherit the psychological effects of past trauma they never directly experienced. Often rooted in displacement and migration, traumatic experiences endured by their parents can quietly shape family dynamics, affecting how emotions are expressed and how relationships are formed. In this sense, trauma can shape relational experiences across generations.

To understand how such generational influence materialises, it is important to take a step back and look at the broader reality of migration.

Migration is often discussed in terms of numbers, policies, and borders, but for many families, it is a story that lives on long after the journey ends. Behind every statistic are personal stories of loss, hope, and survival. Together, these stories reflect how migration has become one of the defining realities of our time. In 2024, more than 304 million people were living outside their country of origin worldwide, nearly double the number recorded just three decades ago (United Nations, 2024; UN DESA, 2024). Importantly, a growing share of global migration is not driven by choice but by necessity. Around one in six international migrants have been forcibly displaced due to war, persecution, violence, or human rights violations, the highest proportion recorded since global refugee data began (United Nations, 2024).

For many people, forced migration involves exposure to profound trauma, followed by years of uncertainty and adjustment. Research consistently shows that refugees and asylum seekers face greater risks of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (Tribe et al., 2019). In response, psychologists and professional bodies have increasingly called for support that goes beyond immediate crisis management, emphasising a need to recognise the long-term psychological and social effects of forced migration on individuals, families, and communities (Tribe & Berdondini, 2020).

But trauma does not end at resettlement; it echoes forward. In many families, its psychological and social consequences extend across generations, even when later generations have not directly experienced the original traumatic events (Cacace & Summers, 2025). This phenomenon is known as intergenerational trauma (IT), and it can shape how children grow up, relate to others, and make sense of the world. Intergenerational trauma has been widely studied in relation to mental health outcomes and family dynamics among both first- and second-generation individuals (e.g., Bloch & Hirsch, 2018; Smette & Aarset, 2024).

More broadly, research shows that trauma can shape intimate relationships, while intimate relationships can also influence how trauma is experienced (Zurbriggen et al., 2012). However, far less is known about these dynamics among second-generation immigrants, particularly in relation to trauma inherited from their parents. In reviewing major academic databases (e.g., PsycNET, PubMed, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Web of Science), we found limited research examining how inherited trauma shapes intimate relationships in this population. Instead, existing studies largely focus on cultural identity and resilience. (e.g., Abularrage et al., 2024; Ludwig, 2020; Ullah, 2025).

Our research project aims to address this gap. In light of recent immigration patterns, exploring the lived experiences of adult second-generation individuals could offer valuable and pressing insight into how intergenerational trauma shapes intimate relationships. With that in mind, we ask: What are the lived experiences of adult second-generation immigrants from trauma-affected families in forming and maintaining emotionally intimate relationships?

In this blog post, we outline the key concepts at the heart of our research and how they guide our ongoing and future work.

Understanding Intergenerational Trauma

IT refers to the way trauma can be passed down from one generation (such as parents or primary caregivers) to the following generations, even when those later generations have not directly experienced the original traumatic events. In this project, we focus specifically on the second generation: the children of people who lived through trauma directly (Cacace & Summers, 2025; Isobel et al., 2021). Although these individuals did not witness the traumatic events themselves, its effects can still influence their emotional reality in a number of ways.

One way this happens is through a process called postmemory. This refers to the stories, emotions, silences, and behavioural patterns that are passed on within families. Over time, these inherited echoes become so deeply internalised that they begin to feel like personal memories (Bloch, 2018). Trauma, in this way, travels across generations, often without awareness, quietly rippling through families in stories, habits, and small interactions, even when it’s never spoken about (Bloch, 2018; Isobel et al., 2021).

These effects rarely end when the event itself is over. In its aftermath, survivors often develop coping strategies that help them endure what they have been through (often referred to as post-traumatic adaptational styles). While these strategies may have once been protective, they can become chronic and have long-term impacts on how survivors connect with others, and in particular, interact with family. This, in turn, forms part of the everyday emotional environment in which their children grow up. Over time, this can shape how their children come to understand themselves, others, and the world. Along these lines, when a parent carries such a sense of emotional guardedness and rigidity, it can affect their children biologically, psychologically, and socially (Danieli et al., 2016).

The concept of IT first emerged in studies on Holocaust survivors and their descendants, where researchers found trauma-related symptoms in individuals who had not directly experienced the atrocities. Since then, IT has been observed in many populations affected by war, genocide, forced migration, and systemic violence (Bloch, 2018; Cacace & Summers, 2025). In light of this, research has shown that IT can affect second-generation individuals in multiple ways, including increased vulnerability to stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and post-traumatic stress (Cacace & Summers, 2025; El-Khalil et al., 2025). These effects are not limited to mental health alone; they can also affect how individuals see themselves and even how they manage their emotions and relate to others.

Researchers have identified several mechanisms that may explain how such trauma is passed down across generations. Attachment-based approaches highlight the pathway of parent-child relationships. They suggest that when parents harbour unresolved trauma, it can affect how they communicate availability and emotional responsiveness with their children. Systemic perspectives explore the pathway of broader family-level dynamics. They zero in on how trauma can sometimes lead to emotional enmeshment, in which boundaries between parent and children are blurred, or role reversals, where children adopt the caregiver role (Cacace & Summers, 2025). These early relational experiences can shape how second-generation individuals see themselves and navigate relationships, potentially creating challenges in forming and maintaining intimate relationships. They may also contribute to the development of dissociative, mood, and behavioural symptoms (Cacace & Summers, 2025; Isobel et al., 2021).

More recently, biological mechanisms have been proposed, particularly epigenetic changes, which explore how our environment and behaviours may change how our genes are expressed. This suggests that trauma may be passed down through more than only relationships, though, more human research is still needed to clarify this potentially biological role in the passing of trauma across generations (Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018).

Intergenerational Trauma and Intimate Relationships

As the second generation comes of age, individuals increasingly engage with social worlds beyond the family and begin to form intimate relationships of their own. Despite the growing body of research on intergenerational trauma, our review revealed limited work focusing specifically on its connection to intimate relationships. Yet, given that IT can have consequences for the second generation, it is crucial to look at how these inherited experiences shape the formation, dynamics, and maintenance of intimate partnerships.

It was previously noted that IT can create difficulties in interpersonal relationships and identity formation (Cacace & Summers, 2025), and we can hypothesise that these difficulties can also affect intimate relationships. Research by Czyżowska et al. (2019) found that these two concepts are important to intimacy in a relationship. For example, a person who struggles with communicating their emotions in general is likely to experience similar challenges in an intimate relationship. From an attachment perspective, these communication difficulties may stem from parents who survived trauma and relied on silence as a coping mechanism (Bloch, 2018), which could shape the child’s early relational experiences and patterns of emotional expression.

Additionally, research shows that family influences not only whom people choose as partners, but also when and under what conditions these relationships occur (Sürig & Wilmes, 2015; Badrinath & Seto, 2024). Family influence works within larger social structures. In some families, first-generation parents limit their children’s contact mostly to people from the same ethnic or community background, which restricts friendships and partner choices (Sürig & Wilmes, 2015; Danieli et al., 2016). For example, immigrant families often settle in neighbourhoods with others from their home country, and first-generation parents play a key role in picking these locations. This decision shapes the social environment of their children, influencing which peers they interact with and, ultimately, their opportunities for forming relationships (Monscheuer, 2018).

For example, Hadžiomerović’s (2022) study examined Bosniaks family dynamics after the genocide, focusing on families who resettled in cities such as St. Louis (USA) and Melbourne (Australia) and their offspring. The study highlights the significant role of parents in shaping their children’s partner choices, particularly through strong expectations of endogamous marriage, as illustrated in the following excerpt:

“There are so many of our girls that remained single here, because of their parents’ pressure to marry Bosniak. So many folks ruined their daughters’ lives, and my husband and I are no dif erent. When our daughter started dating an Aussie, her dad stopped talking with her for four months, even though they lived in the same house. Until she broke it of , he wouldn’t speak a word to her. She told him, “If you think that I will let go of love because of your conviction that only Bosniak counts, you are crazy.”

(Hadžiomerović, 2022, pp. 314)

The daughter’s breakup demonstrates how parental disapproval can outweigh personal choice. While the study explains this mainly in terms of cultural continuity after genocide and displacement, it may also be understood through a psychological lens. Specifically, the experiences of parents who lived through violence and loss may quietly shape how children see themselves, what they expect from relationships, and how they navigate love.

Looking at it this way, the father’s strict behaviour may reflect deeper concerns tied to his own trauma: fear of loss, the need for belonging, and the desire to preserve family and cultural continuity. Living far from Bosnia, he may have fewer opportunities to process these painful memories, and so expectations about relationships take on even more weight. For the second generation, romantic relationships might become a space where family history, inherited trauma, and cultural identity all collide, influencing how they feel, connect, and make choices in love. In this sense, culture doesn’t disappear; it could represent a channel through which the effects of trauma are felt in everyday decisions about intimacy.

Looking Forward

At this time, research on intimate relationships and IT has focused mainly on family dynamics. Studies have shown how trauma in the first generation is passed down through parental expectations, rules, and the broader social and cultural contexts in which families live (e.g. Badrinath & Seto, 2024; Danieli et al., 2016; Hadžiomerović, 2022; Sürig & Wilmes, 2015). These early family experiences can influence how second-generation individuals form and navigate intimate relationships later in life.

To better understand these experiences, our project focuses on qualitative studies that centre the lived experiences of second-generation individuals, showing how inherited trauma influences love and relationships in ways that numbers alone can’t capture. Research directly connecting inherited trauma to romantic relationships in the second-generation adults is limited. This has prompted us to use meta-ethnography, a method that combines findings from multiple studies to identify patterns across contexts, even when the number of studies is small (Cahill et al., 2018). This approach can also have practical value, helping to inform clinical work, such as couples therapy, by highlighting how family histories and inherited trauma influence relational expectations, communication, and emotional dynamics (Tribe & Berdondini, 2020). At the same time, it could point the way for future research, showing where targeted studies are needed to better understand these complex processes.

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About the Author

The Echoes of Intergenerational Trauma: Navigating Intimate Relationships in Adulthood is part of EFPSA’s Research Programme 2025/2026 under the supervision of Raisa Kumaga, University of Cambridge. The team consists of Anna Cardinali, Italy, Milano-Bicocca University, Beste İpek Güner, Turkey, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Evgenija Avtarovska, Macedonia, University of Maribor, Francisca Oliveira, Portugal, University of Coimbra, Joana Mestre, Portugal, University of Groningen & Joana Rebelo, Portugal, Egas Moniz School of Health and Science.