Most Legit Form of Childhood Trauma?

Lowbrow Answer: Divorce
Boo-hoo. My parents don't love each other any more. My world is ending.

Yeah, join the club.

With more than half of American marriages ending in divorce, this doesn't impress me anymore. It's more common than Meryl Streep getting nominated for an Oscar. So don't come to me with your doe eyes, trying to explain how hard your life is because your parents hate each other. Maybe if your father tried to stab your mother with an Alaskan Salmon I'd be impressed. Until then, shut up and stop whining.


Middlebrow Answer: Near-Death Experience
Everyone has that one friend who was run over by a trash truck when he was five and just barely survived. Or who fell from a sixteen-story window and landed in a dumpster. These experiences will often give you really cool, really harrowing lifetime problems like you can't close your eyes without hearing the roar of plane engines or your left knee clicks out of joint every time you try to run.

The biggest problem with this one is that while it may cause some emotional trauma, it also gives you a cool story to tell for the rest of your life. I'm sure falling into the alligator pen will screw you up for a while, but it will also give you a badass set of scars from when the thing clamped down on your chest. It's hard for me to give you trauma points for something that will get you laid as an adult.


Highbrow Answer: Abusive Parents
This one will fuck you up nice and good. You'll spiral into an endless shame cycle, you'll have problems interacting socially, and you'll likely end up in drugs or prostitution or jail or all three. Now THAT'S what I call trauma. If divorce is the "Bambi" of childhood traumas, then abuse is the "Requiem for a Dream."

Phyiscal abuse to children is so gnarly that even criminals can't stand it. Most people who are caught for this and are put in prison don't last a week because the other inmates tear them to shreds. Anything hardcore enough that prison inmates kill other prison inmates over it is definitely valid. Plus you get mega-points from people like Adorno and Heidegger and Arendt who basically argue that the only true human experiences are ones that cause suffering and pain. Nice job.