Discovering The Ghost In the Nursery – Part 1 Intergenerational Parenting Practices
In 1975, Selma Fraiberg, a clinical social worker and child psychoanalyst, presented the metaphor of “ghosts in the nursery.”
In every nursery there are ghosts. They are visitors from the unremembered past of the parents, the uninvited guests at the christening. Under all favourable circumstances the unfriendly and unbidden spirits are banished from the nursery and return to their subterranean dwelling place. The baby makes his own imperative claim upon parental love and in strict analogy with the fairy tales, the bonds of love protect the child and his parents against the intruders. the malevolent ghosts. This is not to say that ghosts cannot invent mischief from their burial places. Even among families where the love bonds are stable and strong the intruders from the parental past may break through the magic circle in an unguarded moment, and a parent and his child may find themselves re-enacting a moment or a scene from another time with another set of characters.
(Fraiberg et al,1975, p.429)
This excerpt may be by far one of the most frightening excerpts I’ve read about the impact of the past on the present and it’s not because it talks about ghosts. It is because of how widespread and pervasive these “ghosts” are among us and how damaging they are as they go about inventing mischief in our lives.
The ‘ghost in the nursery” refers to the impact of a parent’s early, (usually harsh or traumatic) experiences of the way they were raised on their own parenting style. It is the unseen presence of the past influencing the present. It is what we refer to as trans-generational or intergenerational transmission of parenting practices.
Intergenerational Transmission of Parenting Practices
What is trans-generational or intergenerational transmission of parenting? – It is the process through which intentionally or unintentionally, an earlier generation has a psychological influence on the parenting attitudes and behaviours of the next generation. In a very automatic or subconscious way, the dysfunctional parenting pattern experienced as a child is repeated (Fonagy and Target 2002).
Often the feelings associated with painful memories from harsh and dysfunctional parenting are repressed to allow the child to be able to deal with the pain of the experience and so often they do not consciously recall how these experiences made them feel. As a result, they tend to consider the harsh treatment to be normal, because it is how they were raised. To them it is what parents do with/to children.
A prime example is what you hear when some people talk about their experience of being beaten as a child having had no negative impact on them. Some even go as far as claiming it to be the reason behind their “success”. If you think about it, it is absolutely understandable that a child would repress the memories of the pain from having the hands of someone they love and who should nurture them, simultaneously being the hands that inflict pain on their precious little body. It is too much to bear. It is also not a feeling that anyone would want to resurface even in their adult years, so it can often be kept repressed.
Unresolved Issues and Repressed Feelings
Just like ‘ghosts’ these repressed and unresolved issues return to hunt us while remaining invisible (in the unconscious). If not dealt with, the unresolved issues then manifest themselves in behaviours towards the individual’s own children. These “ghosts” can reappear throughout generations, creating a cycle of the same unhealthy parenting practices, because individuals throughout the generations, unconsciously repeat the behaviours of their parents and often their grandparents before that. These are often parents who love their children. But because they have repressed the painful feelings so far down, they are unable to remember the emotional pain of having been on the receiving end of the behaviour. Even though they love their children, they repeat the practice of inflicting the same trauma on them. As Fraiberg (1975) said, you end up re-enacting a moment or a scene from another time with another set of players influenced by visitors from the unremembered past. This should not be your child’s story, but it becomes theirs because you repeat the past.
Indirect Effects of Grandparents Harsh Parenting
A recent study showed that the indirect effects of grandparents’ harsh parenting was observed in externalizing behaviours in their grandchildren, passed down for 3 generations. Bailey et al. (2009) In other words, if your great-grandmother was harsh in her parenting towards your grandmother, the impact of her harsh parenting will be seen in problem behaviours in your child. WHAT??!! Yes! It is as if your great-grandmother were parenting your child and causing her to exhibit problem behaviours. This does not happen by magic or some spiritually unseen force. This happens if painful parent-child experiences from the past have not been dealt with. The result is that it passes down through the generations like a dysfunctional gene and your great-grandmother’s parenting will eventually psychologically affect your own parenting. The impact of the way she parented is passed down to your grandmother, your mother and now to you. It becomes the acceptable way to parent for generations in your family and if none of you pause to make sense of the past, consider why you parent this way and change to mindfully make constructive, reparative, and nurturing parenting decisions, then it will continue to your children and their children.
According to Fraiberg et al. (1975) the intruders from the parental past may break through the magic circle in an unguarded moment, “and a parent and his child may find themselves re-enacting a moment or a scene from another time with another set of characters”. You re-enact the scene of your great-grandmother’s harsh treatment of your grandmother, almost as if controlled by a force because we can carry the effects of trans-generational trauma within us, inherited from the unprocessed painful experiences our parents had and those that their parents before them had. There is a ghost in the nursery, in the dining room, bedroom, living room and if we are not careful and intentional about preventing “unguarded moments”, that ghost will cause disruption throughout our lives and the lives of our children.
What Next?
So how do we stop these ghosts? The key here is in the “unguarded moments”. It is in these moments that the intruders from the parental past may break through “the magic circle”. For us to break the cycle, to prevent the poor parental actions of our fore-parents from impacting our precious children, it is important that we guard our moments. How do we do this? According to Bögels et al (2010) it is by applying the practice of mindfulness to our parenting.
Come on over to @thewholeparenting to join the conversation and for more of the science and practical tips on best practice in parenting our precious little ones.
Reference
Bailey JA, Hill KG, Oesterle S, Hawkins JD. Parenting practices and problem behavior across three generations: monitoring, harsh discipline, and drug use in the intergenerational transmission of externalizing behavior. Dev Psychol. 2009 Sep;45(5):1214-26. doi: 10.1037/a0016129. PMID: 19702387; PMCID: PMC2766356.
Bögels, S.M., Lehtonen, A. & Restifo, K. Mindful Parenting in Mental Health Care. Mindfulness 1, 107–120 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-010-0014-5
Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (2002). Early intervention in the development of self-regulation. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22, 307–335.
Fraiberg, Selma, Adelson, Edna and Shapiro, Vivian. 1975. “Ghosts in the Nursery: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Problems of Impaired Infant-Mother Relationships.” Journal of American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14(3): 387-429.
Freud, S. (1909). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, p.122
