Raising children without entitlement

Listen to Harry Martin, a Family Business Advisor and Family Office Expert, share his views about the need for strong parenting in order to increase the probability of successful business families. It is important, that the rising generation in affluent families learn the value of hard work, so that they are prepared to take on responsibilities in the family business when the time comes.

Wealth is an enemy of good parenting, because good parenting means you want your child to work hard in school and be a good friend of other kids, not be a bully, and just do the simple right things. I used to say that the ideal would be a wealthy family with middle class values. Many people who become CEOs of companies and the rest of it came from a middle class family where the father could have been the postman and the mother was the teacher, and what do they instill in that child? “You do your best all the time, and we will accept nothing less.” So, that kind of parenting creates children in wealthy families who have the possibility of being leaders in the family, in the company, and dealing with complex assets. Without good parenting, caring about what your children do, you can forget all the family counsels, and the family meetings, and the advisors like myself. How can you help those children, because they never learned how to be adults? The couples should have the values that their children are important, one family, the husband has got assets of family wealth that he is managing, and the wife has some sort of a career, ok? Then you look at the children – two of them – nothing. They are in their late twenties early thirties. They have never had a real job. One is ok, ok? What happened? Why did not the parents, who themselves were productive people, put enough effort into their three children, so that the children were kind of like them? So simple. There are many different ways. You do not have to not give them money until they are fifty. You can begin to give money, but you only want to make the money available when the child has clearly demonstrated that they look at wealth as a responsibility rather than a privilege, and that is hard.