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“Generational trauma” has been a buzz phrase for a few years now, as more and more adults learn that the origins of some of their own mental health problems might go much farther back than their own childhoods. It’s a notion that a wealth of science backs up, and now a new study may shed more light on how this link between a parent’s past trauma and a child’s upbringing might manifest.

Psychologists and other scientists have been studying the ways trauma can be passed down for years now, and much of the science has shown that it goes far beyond replicating our parents’ mistakes, as we all used to think.

Studies have shown that trauma experienced during pregnancy impacts the fetus in ways that are predictive of everything from poor life outcomes to mental illness. Even more fascinating, the study of epigenetics has shown that trauma changes our very genes such that it can be passed down from generation to generation in our DNA.

Studies have found, for example, that descendants of Holocaust survivors and Black Americans who were enslaved show genetic markers of those traumas despite having never experienced those events themselves, or even, in the case of slavery, often being multiple generations removed from them.

A recently published Canadian study further showed how trauma goes far beyond just experiencing traumatic events themselves. It followed 501 Canadian families from the time their children were 2 months old until they were 5. All the mothers reported experiencing childhood traumas on the list of so-called “ACEs,” or adverse childhood experiences that are predictive of poor life outcomes and mental health struggles. The list includes everything from parents divorcing to physical or sexual abuse.

The study found that maternal childhood trauma was substantially linked to both socioeconomic level and how attuned and responsive mothers were to their kids’ needs. The traumatized moms in the study tended to be poorer and less sensitive overall.

Speaking anecdotally as a child of a mom like this, the latter is often a result of the former. Regardless, poverty is itself on the list of ACEs, and low attunement and sensitivity can be forms of neglect, which is also on the list of ACEs. So it’s easy to see why this has such an impact on kids.

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When it came to the traumatized moms’ kids, they showed three main tendencies:

1. Emotional problems

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This is certainly no surprise. Children of parents with anxiety and depression are far more susceptible to having anxiety and depression themselves. And given that financial struggles alone are decisively linked to anxiety and depression, let alone childhood trauma, it’s unsurprising that many of the mothers in the study had these conditions, and so did their children.

Another unsurprising but important finding: The moms’ rates of depression were also linked to their kids’ fathers’ histories of what the study called “conduct problems.” The fathers’ negative behaviors strengthened the link between maternal anxiety and depression and the same conditions in kids.

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2. Behavior problems

The study found a strong link between the mothers’ lower sensitivity and kids who were aggressive or rule-breakers, and an even stronger link between these behaviors and relationship conflict in the kids’ parents, which itself was in turn strongly linked to maternal trauma.

Here again, the fathers had a major impact, though. A father’s own history of behavior problems as a kid was linked to their own children’s issues. We can infer that this was also linked to the marital discord observed, though the study did not delve into this specifically.

3. Struggles with academics

The final outcome observed was cognitive difficulties in kids, especially when it came to vocabulary and math skills. The scientists found that the moms’ levels of sensitivity were the biggest factor, and resulted in low test scores in these skills for their kids. This is, of course, in line with the wealth of data showing childhood adversity has a direct impact on learning and academic performance.

Overall, the study’s authors say their findings are in line with what’s called the “interactionist model” of child development. It’s a sort of trickle-down effect that scientists call a “cascade of risk.” Trauma impacts moms’ mental health, socioeconomic level, and marital relationships, which impacts their ability to serve their kids’ emotional needs, which in turn impacts their children’s development.

And while one of the study’s limitations is its lack of in-depth examination of fathers’ impacts on all this, it nonetheless gives yet more confirmation that we should view trauma not as discrete events that happened to one person, but events that have wide-ranging impacts. It also lends yet more credence to how important the mental health work that so many younger generations are doing these days. That work doesn’t just affect the past and present, but the future as well.

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.