In a new book, Scotland After The Virus, edited by Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow, some of Scotland’s leading thinkers, writers and commentators contemplate the Covid pandemic and what it means for our future

IN the winter of 1944, Nazi forces cut off food supplies to the Netherlands. Famine ensued, with people reduced to eating tulip bulbs, including mothers-to-be carrying babies yet unborn. Luckily, the famine was short-lived, although not before 20,000 people died. It ended when Allied troops freed occupied Holland in May 1945. Those short six months cast a long shadow. Once the babies were born and grew into adults, a surprising number went on to develop cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes and schizophrenia (Paul, 2010).

In 2001, the Twin Towers of New York City were obliterated in a terrorist attack. Hundreds of pregnant women were in the vicinity. Some could not shake the terror they felt, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder, with its heightened sensitivity to danger. What happened to their babies? Research shows that a number carried the consequences of that day within their biology. At 12 months of age, their baseline levels of cortisol remained abnormally low. Their ability to handle stress had been permanently altered by experiences their mother had had while they were still in the womb (Paul, 2010). If you are wondering whether this essay is about pregnancy, it isn’t. I’m simply trying to find a way to talk about the remarkable ways in which, as human beings, our present is woven from strands of our past.

I don’t think we fully appreciate the connection between past and present. We tend to think of the past as a place. It’s a place with edges and boundaries. It’s a place we move on from. It’s a place we think we can move beyond precisely because we conceive of it as having boundaries. The past is a place we tell stories about -- because we don’t live there anymore. Except, the thing is, that’s not quite true. The past still lives within us.

We need to think more deeply about the threads that connect the past and present. We need to do that right now, as Scotland leaves our national lockdown and steps into the Covid world that follows. The decisions we take in these weeks and months will do more than get us through this unprecedented period. Those decisions will shape our future, and especially our children’s futures. That’s going to happen whether we intend it or not. I would prefer that we are thoughtful and creative and wise in the choices we make.

The past lives within each of us because it moulds our biology. The neural pathways in our brains, the blood vessels in our vascular system, the sinews in our muscle fibres were all sculpted by experiences of threat and safety. They are threads, both literally and metaphorically. Long and thin, those threads stretch not only through the spaces of our bodies, but back through time, even to the generations before we were conceived. Scientific studies of trauma and adverse childhood experiences have revealed that children’s distress casts a much longer shadow than our culture has reckoned on. We now know that childhood suffering incubates adult health conditions like heart disease, liver cirrhosis, obesity, drug use, alcoholism, diabetes and dementia (Felitti, 2002).

If we are wise, this knowledge about trauma will prompt us to greater curiosity about the sources of childhood distress. What stresses do children and young people carry? Asking that question takes courage, for it generates unexpected and uncomfortable insights. You begin to see that adults cause more loss and fear than we recognise.

WE trust in our good intentions. We hold them close, alongside our beliefs and expectations. But when we look candidly, we see that children’s emotional realities do not automatically match up with our adult intentions. Children and young people feel things that make us uncomfortable. In particular, they feel things about us, about the adults in their lives – about things we did, things we decided for them, things we couldn’t protect them from. When we’ve stopped to look at ourselves through their eyes, and what we see is too discomforting, it is easy to resort to denial. Denial protects our sense of ourselves as good people, saving us from shame and guilt.

Here’s the problem. There have been all sorts of well-intentioned policies and practices put in place by policymakers, professionals and ordinary mums and dads in Scotland’s past, which we now know caused long-lasting harm to children in their care. If we don’t ramp up our courage and curiosity in this time of COVID, we risk casting long shadows on our children’s futures, as did our well-meaning predecessors in their time. Let me illustrate by telling more stories.

In Scotland of 1939, children living in cities were in danger of dying from bombs. Anxious social workers evacuated them to safety in the countryside. We now know that many evacuees, especially the youngest and older ones who received poor placements, experienced significant emotional and mental health difficulties. This affected their marriages and their health throughout adulthood, and their relationships with their own children (Rusby and Tasker, 2009).

IN Scotland of the 1950s, policymakers overseeing shiny new NHS hospitals prevented parents from staying with their children. Parents were allowed to visit once a week because medical staff viewed parental fussing as an obstacle to children settling into the routine of the ward. Campaigners argued vehemently that this policy caused emotional deterioration and developmental regression, especially for the youngest children. Anecdotal evidence now shows they were right. A large number of those children have gone on to suffer lifelong relational struggles, psychiatric problems and health conditions as a result of their hospital stay (Robertson and Robertson, 1989).

In Scotland of the 1980s, teaching unions defended the legal right of teachers to belt children and adolescents using the time-honoured leather taws. “Belting” turns out to be slang for “institutionalised violence”. Carol Craig has argued that it is time for Scotland to face up to the consequences of our history as a “belt happy culture” that has left a national legacy of low confidence and fear of mistakes (Craig, 2018).

Unless you believe that any of the policymakers, professionals or parents of those eras set out to harm, then you have to accept they believed their actions would serve children and young people for the good. They trusted in their own intentions. Yet, they were mistaken, and their actions cast long shadows over their children’s lives.

We face the same risk today.