In recent years, intergenerational trauma has become a much larger talking point in society as our understanding of exactly what it means grows and changes with the times. Sophie Isobel and her colleagues use Hesse and Main’s definition of intergenerational trauma as “the process by which parents with unresolved trauma transmit this to their children via specific interactional patterns, resulting in the effects of trauma being experienced without the original traumatic experience or event.” (Isobel et. al, 2018) when looking at how to prevent it. As its relevancy in pop culture grows, we can find it being discussed in our daily lives through commonly consumed mediums such as music, movies, or television. My favourite musical artist, Kendrick Lamar, is known for covering a variety of societal issues in his music such as racism and consumerism. In his most recent album from 2022, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, intergenerational trauma was a prominent focus. Most blatantly, Lamar talks about the trauma passed down to him from his father in the song appropriately titled Father Time featuring Sampha. 

The song opens with Lamar’s wife suggesting that he goes to therapy, which he reacts negatively to, saying “Real n**** need no therapy, fuck you talkin’ about?” This is a line that Kendrick refers to as his favourite from the album in an interview with Spotify because Lamar feels it accurately conveys how therapy and doctors, in general, are stigmatized in Black American culture. “We learn to hold our shit in… You know, I’m still stuck how my pops think, ‘fuck you need therapy for?’” (“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar”, 2:25). Through the two verses in the song, Lamar shows his love for his father being there as opposed to many of his peers who grew up without fathers, while at the same time trying to sort through the trauma he inherited. This duality between the positive and the negative impact these ‘lessons’ of stoicism, and attempts to teach him ‘how to be a man’ had on Kendrick is the main theme of the song. In the first verse his dad pushes him far while playing basketball, ignoring his foul calls, and when his mom says “That boy is exhausted,” he said, “Go fuck yourself, If he give up now, that’s gon’ cost him, life’s a bitch”  (Lamar). The positive side is that he learned how it feels to lose and to get back up and keep pushing, but the other side of the coin is that he develops “A foolish pride” and they’re going to be “sore losers forever” (Lamar). 

The second verse delves deeper into the lingering emotional struggles in his adult life stemming from Kendrick’s upbringing. As a kid, he was “Lookin’ for “I love you,” but his dad rarely showed him affection. He mentions how quickly he would bounce back from a scraped knee, because if he cried he would be shamed for showing weakness. This taught him to hide his emotions because “Men should never show feelings, being sensitive never helped” (Lamar). Kendrick then provides some insight into why his dad raised him the way he did: “His momma died, I asked him why he goin’ back to work so soon? His first reply was “Son, that’s life, the bills got no silver spoon” (Lamar). From his dad’s perspective, coming from poverty, you can’t stew in your feelings because it’ll take away from making money, and the world waits for no one. You’ll be left a day late and a dollar short. Because of this perspective, Lamar’s dad taught him “fuck everybody, go get your money, son, Protect yourself, trust nobody” except for his mom. (Lamar). A lesson which Kendrick says “made relationships seem cloudy, never attached to none So if you took some likings around [him], [he] might reject the love” (Lamar). Appearing throughout the entire album, difficulties with his relationship with his current wife, as well as other women in his life including family and past lovers are highlighted in songs like Auntie Diaries and Mother I Sober. However, Lamar partially credits his success to his father’s lessons in the second verse, as these “Daddy issues kept [him] competitive, that’s a fact” (Lamar). 

Kendrick then raps about the other ways in which this cycle is perpetuated within African American communities, people who “got no daddy, grow up overcompensatin’”, that “Learn shit ’bout bein’ a man and disguise it as bein’ gangsta” (Lamar). This relates to how young men without father figures often turn to media or other older men in their community, which often portray manhood as it pertains to organized crime. Finally, Lamar addresses his hope for what men listening take away from this song, hoping that they can neutralize this trauma to avoid passing it down to their own children, and to “give the women a break” (Lamar), acknowledging the pain and strife he put his own wife through while trying to cope with issues from his childhood. Kendrick poses intergenerational trauma as something that can be healed and a cycle that can be broken. Similarly to Isobel who claims that healing trauma as an adult through “a combination of verbal and nonverbal psychotherapeutic approaches” is the best way to prevent trauma transmission to children (Isobel et. al, 2018), Kendrick decides “To challenge [him]self to go to therapy.”, saying “Shit, that’s like a whole new step, in a whole new generation. It’s growth.” (“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar”, 2:43). The impact of Kendrick Lamar’s music is undeniable, with his song Alright becoming a sort of anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement early on in 2015, it’s clear that he understands this impact. Consistently using his music to cover new issues he sees in his communities and society altogether while promoting healing is nice to see from an artist of his magnitude, and I can only hope people listen to Father Time and focus on destigmatizing men’s mental health and what it means to ‘be a man’ to prevent continuous intergenerational trauma in father-son relationships. 

Sources Cited

Isobel, Sophie, et al. “Preventing Intergenerational Trauma Transmission: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.” Preventing Intergenerational Trauma Transmission: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis, 16 Dec. 2018, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jocn.14735. 

“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar.” YouTube, Spotify, 17 June 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU4q-UqIW38. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023. 

Lamar, Kendrick. “Father Time Feat. Sampha.” Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2022, track 5. Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/4xIhSUJantE6BMl3u8dtCJ