The primary challenge facing Milwaukee and similar high-poverty cities is not one of the usual suspects – education, crime, even the availability of jobs – although all those play a role. Instead, it is an epidemic of trauma passed from one generation to another, one neighborhood to the next. The perpetuation of trauma has been documented in the families of those who survived the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Vietnam War and Cambodian genocide.
That data has now turned up the same phenomena in families entrenched in poverty, violence and neglect. In Milwaukee, the nation’s third most impoverished big city, trauma researchers contend the seeds of distress were planted years ago when the current generation of adults were children. They say new seeds are being planted right now. That revelation is beginning to shift how Milwaukee and other cities respond to social and economic decline.
It also is prompting researchers to explore why some who are exposed to childhood trauma emerge undefeated – and whether their resilience can be coaxed out of others and even scaled to entire neighborhoods. Further, the epidemic is not confined to urban areas. Wisconsin’s rural underclass shares many of the same root problems – and consequences. It’s just better hidden.