The Evolution of the Family

Peter Jaskiewicz describes how the changing of the family unit over the past century impacts family businesses.

The truth is that for a few hundred years, families weren’t changing at all, but then roughly from 1900 onwards families have gone through tremendous changes. It’s true that most people do not have one family, in fact during their lifetime they’ll have a few families, they get divorced, they might marry again, they might have partnerships without being married at all, and all of that has created a dynamic that nowadays, family is not one thing, but there is a heterogeneity of types of families out there and that causes a lot of challenges for businesses. Because family is not something that you are born into and die, but something that will evolve and change along the way quite a lot. So for the business, the issue here that happens is that it might not be absolutely clear that if you are born, if you get married and have a first child is born, that this child will take over the business, this child will be around, might not be even clear that you’d be in touch with the child for the rest of your life, it might be the point that there are several other siblings from other partnerships, and even if everything works out and is stable and evolves, you have no guarantee that these children want to take over the business you’ve been in.