Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 21 Nov 2015.<\/p>\n
This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive compensation.<\/p>\n
A week ago I attended The Science of Character Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston.\u00a0 Lots of theoretical and not a lot of practical info given but one keynote session keeps reverberating in my mind.\u00a0 Although the research findings are still being examined, according to Kenneth Ginsburg, MD, the line between nature and nurture is blurring.\u00a0 This has implications for a genealogist and reinforces our research practices!<\/p>\n
How many times have you re-discovered that you had several ancestors in the same or similar career that you engage in today?\u00a0 Of course, if you live on the family farm that wouldn\u2019t be surprising but hubby and I have both found that we have educators back into the 1500\u2019s.\u00a0 Who would have thought?\u00a0 My mom was a bookkeeper and may dad worked in a steel mill and farmed.\u00a0 Husband\u2019s dad was a chemist and his mom, a secretary.\u00a0 None of our grandparents were educators, or so we thought.\u00a0 I did uncover that my paternal grandmother taught for a brief time prior to her marriage but that discovery was long after I became an educator.\u00a0 Every time I complete a career interest inventory it points me into the direction of education so I must have inherited traits from a long list of predecessors.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/p>\n
When I think of genetics I think of gender, body type and eye, hair and skin color.\u00a0 I also think of diseases, such as hemophilia, Tay-Sachs and sickle cell. \u00a0As a counselor, I\u2019ve never really thought about the fact that past traumatic experiences genetically <\/strong>influence the future.<\/p>\n Ginsburg mentioned a study regarding Holocaust victims and changes in their genetic makeup being passed to their offspring and their children\u2019s children.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking about horrific medical experimentation, either.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about changes resulting from living during the time of the Holocaust.\u00a0 You can read about the study here,<\/a><\/p>\n What does this mean for genealogists?\u00a0 I think it drives home the importance of not just searching for records pertaining to a particular individual but also finding out about events occurring during that individual\u2019s life.\u00a0 Knowing the family\u2019s socioeconomic status \u00a0can shed light on the person in more ways than just a marriage license ever could.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n My mother, a product of the depression and a daughter of immigrants, had to leave school to support the family.\u00a0 Later, as a single mother, her limited job choices hindered her earned income.\u00a0 My husband\u2019s family also experienced the depression geographically close to where my mother resided.\u00a0 His maternal line, though, was not as severely affected as my family.\u00a0 His grandparents were all born in the U.S. and none of their children had to quit school.\u00a0 There was a tough time on his paternal line but the children were younger than my mother and with the help of extended family, bore less of a detrimental long term effect.<\/p>\n Am I cheap (my husband likes to call me thrifty instead) because I inherited a cheap gene due to the depression and my husband did not inherit one?\u00a0 According to the research findings that\u2019s possible. (Well, maybe there isn’t a cheap gene but gene markers may have been altered.) \u00a0I suspect changes occurred on the X chromosome as my daughter is cheap, too, and my son is not.\u00a0 Mom could have passed it to me and I passed it to daughter. My maternal grandmother and great grandmothers were definitely not frugal!\u00a0 Since I wasn\u2019t there I can only go by hearsay but they didn\u2019t like the monetary constraints of the depression at all and once the family\u2019s finances improved, went back to spending on home improvements, new clothing and trips as they had done before the depression happened.\u00a0 I can validate that by looking at pictures and items purchased by them over their lifetimes.\u00a0My mother self reported many times as I was growing up about how stressful it was to live through the depression. \u00a0As the article mentioned, stress can influence genes.<\/p>\n Stress results not just from socioeconomic status. \u00a0Other areas need to be explored, as well. \u00a0Think about church and organizational affiliations (imagine the stress of being shunned!), military involvement (my dad stationed in Alaska was not as stressed as hubby’s uncle who was a prisoner of war), education (struggling academically or being forced to quit vs. being a valedictorian), relocation (being alone instead of having family and friends as support), and weather disasters (starting over after the Chicago Fire or Hurricane Katrina) could all alter a family’s future. \u00a0These examples are limited – there are lots of stress factors that I haven’t even mentioned.<\/p>\n Genealogically best practice: \u00a0we need to keep stress events of our ancestors in mind as we research and examine the stress level for the identified event. \u00a0A broken car axle would stress me out today. \u00a0I could have been killed or severely injured when it broke so a threat to my safety would have occurred, the financial impact would be painful and the lost time from work would make me anxious. \u00a0A broken axle on my ancestor’s Conestoga wagon, however, could have been far more stressful than what I would have experienced today. \u00a0No wagon shop on the prairie, safety threats would also include having to face severe weather, wild animals and unsavory individuals. \u00a0My ancestor’s stress level would far exceed what I would be feeling.<\/p>\n I want to caution, Dear Readers, that the implication of experiencing stress does not mean that future family members are doomed for eternity. \u00a0This blog was certainly not meant to be an excuse for being stuck in a detrimental family cycle. \u00a0There are many ways to cope with stress and traumatic life experiences that you or perhaps, an ancestor, had experienced. Definitely seek help if you’re affected!<\/p>\n All this reflection on stress also got me thinking about the changes being made to the Ancestry.com website.\u00a0If you haven’t heard, by December 15th<\/sup> only the \u201cnew\u201d Ancestry will be available.\u00a0 Perhaps I\u2019m giving Ancestry.com more credit then they deserve but maybe why they are featuring life events now is due to their revamped dna service.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know that for sure but it will be helpful if they can improve upon the no brainers featured of say, the years that World War I occurred. \u00a0If Ancestry could identify events that might be specific to the area where the ancestor lived would be just awesome! Until that time, we need to hunt down the events ourselves so we can better understand our families.<\/p>\n With the holidays approaching I will be letting you know about genealogy gift items that may be of interest to you. \u00a0Some of these flexoffers<\/strong> may provide me compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 21 Nov 2015. This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive compensation. A week ago I attended The Science of Character Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston.\u00a0 Lots of theoretical and not a lot of practical info … Continue reading “Genealogy and Your Genes – Experiencing Trauma Can Last Longer Than a Lifetime!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[124,97,202,201],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships","tag-depression","tag-dna","tag-stress","tag-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}