Developing a Strong Sense of Coherence as a Pathway Beyond Intergenerational Trauma: Narratives of Adult Children of Vietnamese Boat Refugees

Maladaptive family interaction is one of the mechanisms through which trauma is transmitted across generations. The current intervention approach for trauma-affected families focuses on traumatized parents and child–parent dyads during childhood. This leaves a gap in how adult children, who might no longer live with their parents, can overcome the negative impacts of maladaptive childhood interactions with parents as a legacy of parental trauma history. This study focuses on the children of Vietnamese boat refugees in their 30s and 40s in two cities in Norway, applying narrative interviews to elicit long narratives about their lifespan experiences. A hybrid analytic approach utilizes Thematic Network Analysis, informed by a conceptual framework integrating salutogenesis theory and Bowen family systems theory. The findings reveal that maladaptive parent–child interactions in Vietnamese boat refugee families include parents’ high expectations, harsh parenting, children’s obligation to please parents, and adultification, which are trauma-shaped and mediated by Vietnamese culture. Developing a strong sense of coherence (SOC), characterized by enhancing one’s understanding of the self in relation to family, making meaning regarding the past, and playing an active role in reframing relationships with one’s parents, serves as a pathway to outgrow the impacts of maladaptive patterns in one’s family of origin. Overall, this paper contributes a salutogenic, lifespan-oriented framework for understanding recovery beyond childhood impacts of intergenerational trauma.