How Poverty, Racism, and Trauma Interrupted Black Development
By Linda Landum, RN, MSN-Ed, MA, author of What We Didn't Get: How Poverty, Racism, and Trauma Interrupted Black Development The short answer Childhood emotional neglect is what happens when a child's feelings are not noticed, named or answered often enough. In many African American families it is also a form of generational trauma: parents who were raised under poverty, racism and constant danger learned to put survival ahead of feelings, and passed that pattern down without meaning to. It is not a judgment on anyone's love. It is a gap, and gaps can be filled. Most of us can name the bad things that happened to us as children. It is much harder to name the good things that never happened: the hug after a hard day, the question "how did that make you feel?", the adult who sat with us while we cried instead of telling us to stop. That missing piece is what psychologists call childhood emotional neglect , and it is the thread that runs through my book...