There is much mention of children’s need for a loving family on social media and in advocacy campaigns. Particularly from those working in child protection reform. There is no doubt that children absolutely do need this. However, as someone who grew up in a loving family, I need to tell you that that is not enough.
Saying this may cause confusion, or possibly anger in some. At face value, it may be taken as coming from a privileged, materialistic perspective. Please allow me to explain what I am trying to say and how it has nothing whatsoever to do with material resources. When I think of what impacted me most about what was lacking in my childhood, it is not the lack of money (which was real) that comes to mind. Instead, what comes to mind is the responsibility I carried, despite my parents’ love and best efforts, and how this left little room for me.
Receiving love is extremely important for children, but they also need to be nurtured. Both love and nurture require a family environment, but having a family environment is not a guarantee of either. At the moment ‘love’ and ‘nurture’ seem to regularly be used interchangeably, so let me explain why they are not the same. In a way, I think that focus on loving families – in contrast to institutional settings where there is no love and where ‘care’ amounts to psychosocial neglect – without recognising the need for nurturing care is connected to the recognition of ‘big T Trauma’ and the lack of understanding of ‘small t trauma’.
Big T Trauma refers to the things we all understand are likely to cause trauma: the experience of catastrophic events. Things like war, abuse, neglect, exploitation, surviving a disaster or a major accident. These things are not guaranteed to result in trauma, but they increase the likelihood and when we know something like this has happened to someone, we all understand where signs indicating trauma might come from. Small t trauma is much less recognised, it can be – again no guarantee, just a higher likelihood – caused by long-term or chronic high levels of stress caused by circumstances that remove the possibility of a general sense of safety and belonging. This can include poverty, marginalisation, oppression, having your experiences structurally invalidated, institutionalisation, homelessness, loneliness, and unemployment. It also includes a lack of reliable, responsive – in other words nurturing – care that makes you feel safe and seen as a child.
There was never any doubt that my parents loved us. They did everything they could to care for my siblings and me as best they could. However, there were limits to their ability, due to my parents’ own unresolved trauma, mental health issues, plus the undiagnosed neurodiversity in the entire family. At times, nurturing care was available and at other times, the capacity was just not there.
The power of the message that what children need is a loving family and the lack of attention for and recognition of small t trauma, meant that it took me a very long time – decades – to start to recognise that I was living my life in survival mode due to small t trauma. My view of my childhood was that I came from a loving family and that I had never felt unsafe. Both those things are true, but they are only part of the story. I discovered that not consciously feeling unsafe is not the same as feeling safe and what a difference the gap between those two things makes. I discovered how deeply I was affected by my parents’ limitations despite their great love for me and how the adaptations and coping mechanisms that I developed to make it through childhood were holding me back in adulthood. This is an ongoing journey of discovery and healing for me.
Discovering how the world opens up for me and how energy and capacity are freed up when they are no longer invested in constant vigilance and suppression of my own needs, has made me aware of how important it is to recognise small t trauma and its effects. It has made me realise more deeply that children need fairly consistently nurturing parents, as well as loving ones, to be able to thrive.
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