The effects of family culture on family formation (2023)

Most people don't think of their family as having a "culture". For many, it's a trusted group of people doing what they always do.

But exactly that, a unique way of thinking, feeling, judging and acting, makes a culture. Children are directly and subtly shaped by the family culture into which they are born. As you grow up, your assumptions about what is right and wrong often reflect the beliefs, values, and traditions of your family culture. Most do not value their family's customs and carry many attitudes and behaviors acquired in childhood into adulthood.

Even those who later reject the family culture in whole or in part find that they are not completely free of its early influences. Never mind that they promise themselves never to repeat their own family's mistakes: certain cultural attitudes and reactions are so ingrained in family members that they continue to influence how they think and behave, whether they are aware of the influence or not. not. 🇧🇷

However, saying that families have identifiable cultures does not mean that they are static. Families are in a constant state of transition, as each member goes through life cycles and the family itself moves from one stage of development to the next. Marriages, births, divorces and deaths change the family constellation and profoundly alter the family culture. At the same time, larger political, economic, and social forces also influence family culture. The social revolution that began in the 1960s changed, among other things, attitudes and expectations regarding the roles of men and women. The boy or girl who grows up in a family where the mother and aunts are working women is exposed to a family culture very different from that known by their grandparents.

organizational cultures

In the 1980s, management theorists and consultants popularized the concept of organizational culture. They described corporations in anthropological terms, looking at their social structure, rules and laws, language, dress codes, and even their artifacts. Organizations with different cultures invariably bore the signature of their founders. The group of clean-shaven IBM executives in white shirts and blue suits reflected the personality, beliefs and style of Thomas Watson Sr., as did the bearded Apple employees, who wore jeans, T-shirts and Birkenstock sandals. Steve reflected. Jobs and Steve Wonziak.

Like businesses, family foundations have different organizational cultures and are as diverse as the families they create. They cover the entire gamut from formal meetings with meetings organized in the foundation's meeting rooms to informal meetings with gatherings around a family member's dinner table. As with companies, the values ​​and norms of the founders and their families determine the direction of the foundation, how it is managed, how conflicts are handled and how emotions are expressed.

To see the impact of family culture on the style and direction of starting a family, Chapter 1 looks at four specific cultural characteristics:values, norms, traditions,jconformity🇧🇷 Each is examined below.

values

Family values ​​set the tone for starting a family. They inform the foundation's choice of mission and policies and practices. Usually, the values ​​of the people who created the family's wealth prevail. Entrepreneurs with determination and drive to accumulate wealth often have powerful and attractive personalities to match them. It is not by chance, then, that they form foundations in their image and in accordance with their values, their philosophy and their preferred management style, as well as in their company.

One such man was A. Lincoln Filene, who established the Lincoln and Therese Filene Foundation in 1946. Born shortly after President Lincoln was assassinated, he was named after his immigrant parents in honor of the fallen president. Filene remained true to his namesake; Throughout his life, he represented progressive political views and acted accordingly.

Innovative entrepreneur Lincoln Filene and his brother Edward built a large retail business, Filene's department store in Boston, founded by their father. Lincoln Filene later joined with other store owners to form the Federated Department Stores. The Filene brothers were the first to hire a full-time nurse into their business as a perk, at a time when most workers could not afford good health insurance. They also encouraged the creation of credit unions to help workers increase purchasing power.

Lincoln Filene was as involved with the world as he was with his business. In the 1930s, he created programs for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany with the dual purpose of helping them find jobs and learn what it means to be an American. In the 1950s, he founded the Filene Center for Civic Engagement at Tufts University and also helped establish Boston's first public broadcasting station.

Fifty years after the founding of the family foundation, Filene's social and political commitment is still valid. Lincoln Filene would be happy to have third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation family members working side by side on the board and program committees today, carrying out the work he began on issues related to citizenship education, public broadcasting, and professional education. 🇧🇷

The values ​​of the entrepreneurs who created his family's fortune don't always inspire family members to follow in their footsteps. In some cases, they motivate them to take an opposite path. Charles Demeré, founder of the Debley Foundation in St. Mary's City, Maryland took a different path from her father and brothers.

Demeré grew up listening to the story of his father Raymond's rise from rags to riches. Raymond had to drop out of school to support his family and started delivering barrels of oil from the back of a truck. Over time, he grew his sole proprietorship into the largest oil company in the southeast. But still young, Demeré realized that his father was not happy.

“I saw my father read books on how to find peace of mind,” says Demeré, “but I realized he didn't have it. He spent his health to gain wealth and then spent his wealth to regain his health. I realized that wealth alone does not make life satisfying. I decided to look elsewhere for meaning.”

While his brothers pursued careers in business, Demeré devoted himself to spiritual pursuits. Ordained an Episcopal priest, he and his wife Margaret decided to raise their family in modest circumstances. After Demeré and his brothers dissolved a business partnership inherited from their father in 1962, Demeré used 10% of his money to donate to the Debley Foundation. The name Debley, which combines his father's (Demeré) and mother's (Mobley) surnames, symbolizes the family's philanthropic endeavors, which Demeré sought to promote through the foundation. He invited his brothers along with their cousins ​​on the Mobley side of the family to join the council.

“My idea was to pool our money and ideas,” says Demeré, “and thus strengthen the ties between the two sides of the family. it never happened. They would just ask me what I would like to give and then approve and close the session.”

Demeré's dream of involving the extended family in creating a family culture based on philanthropic values ​​never came to fruition. Later, he tried again and invited his children to the meeting when they were of age. Today, two of Demeré's four children are on the board along with his wife and two cousins.

It's not just the values ​​of the person who creates the family legacy that shape the family culture. The O'Neill family of Cleveland attaches its value to the family of Hugh O'Neill, who emigrated to the United States in 1884. Hugh O'Neill, who settled in Ohio, raised his children respecting and supporting family ties. His grandson, William (Bill) J. O'Neill, Jr., explains that as he grew up, “all branches of the family lived close by. We were almost as close to our cousins ​​as we were to our own brothers and sisters. My grandfather passed on his family values ​​to his children, who passed them on to us. Now my generation is doing the same for the next generation."

Members of the O'Neill family worked together at the family business Leaseway Transportation, a public company founded by Bill's father and his two uncles. Along with Bill and some of his cousins, they turned the shipping and storage business into a billion dollars a year in sales. After the family sold their interest in Leaseway, Bill established a family office to manage the family's investments.

In 1987, the family found another way to unite its members. Bill and his mother, Dorothy, the main donor, established the William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Foundation. In keeping with the clan's mentality, their goal was to involve all family members in the foundation at every level they could participate. Bill and his mother are the sole trustees, but his five siblings sit on the payments committee along with Bill's wife and three third-generation members. Whether or not they serve on committees, adult members from all six branches of the family are invited to meetings and all receive detailed minutes from each charter meeting explaining what was decided and why.

Standards

Norms are the spoken and unspoken rules of cultures. Amplified over time, they act as invisible constraints on the behavior of family members. Rules set standards for how family members dress, speak, and act. They also set boundaries for acceptable or unacceptable behavior under different circumstances and conditions. Rules are more than just etiquette, they give family members a direction for life inside and outside the home.

When families lay foundations, they bring with them the codes of conduct that have shaped the family culture. In 1985, John and Marianne Vanboven (not their real names) established the Theodore Vanboven Family Foundation in honor of John's father, a Dutch immigrant who built the family fortune. Originally, the board consisted of John and Marianne and their two children, Thomas and Alexandra. Then, two years ago, the children's spouses, Joan and Michael, were added to the board.

"In our family, manners count above all else," says Thomas. “As children, my sister and I were taught not to raise our voices, never to ask personal questions, and to avoid contradictions at all costs. If we broke those rules, my parents would only have to raise an eyebrow to tell us that our behavior was out of character."

When Thomas and Alexandra went to college in the 1970s, they encountered different rules. There, freedom of expression was not only encouraged, it was seen as healthy. Both Thomas and Alexandra spent several years in therapy to learn how to express their feelings, and both grew up married in family cultures where fighting and yelling were common. However, when Thomas and Alexandra are in the company of their parents, they still follow the rules of behavior they learned as children.

Before the spouses joined the board, meetings to discuss tasks went smoothly. The foundation funds university programs and social services run by the church. Although Thomas and Alexandra wanted to be more adventurous financiers, they were reluctant to submit proposals beyond their parents' reach.

However, when spouses joined the board, they had a different understanding of their roles. They expected that, as trustees, they would be free to discuss ideas and submit grant requests. Joan quickly understood the Vanbovens' unspoken rules and stayed clear of the controversy. But Michael persisted in defending his positions, sometimes quite aggressively and long after the board had rejected them.

“It was clear from my parents' silence and body language,” says Thomas, “that they were uncomfortable when Michael raised his voice or slammed his fist on the table, but Michael didn't seem to take their cues. When I mentioned his behavior to my mother, she denied that anything was wrong. My parents too. They close their eyes to what they don't want to see and hope the problem will resolve itself."

As much as the Vanboven family tries to avoid controversy, the Jacobs family welcomes it. They describe themselves as a "loud, lively bunch" and there's no doubt who inspired that image. Joe Jacobs, the son of Lebanese immigrants, grew up poor in Brooklyn. After earning a degree in chemical engineering, he founded a small consulting firm in 1947, which he incorporated into the multibillion-dollar Jacobs Engineering Group.

As a college student, Joe was trained in Socratic dialogue, and that discipline sparked a love of intellectual struggle that he passed on to his three daughters. Over the years, the family has had many opportunities to practice their debating skills. Joe is a conservative politician and free enterprise advocate, and his daughters are liberals. One rule guides family disputes: say what you have to say with passion and warmth, and then give others the same opportunity.

Once, during a particularly heated argument between Joe and his daughter Linda, an angry Joe asked Linda why she was being so stubborn. His immediate response was, "Where do you think I learned that, Dad?" A few days later, Linda gave her father another reply. She presented him with a plaque with a Jonathan Swift quote: “We love each other because our sufferings are the same.” Joe hung it on the kitchen wall.

In 1989, Joe and his wife Violet (Vi) founded the Jacobs Family Foundation in San Diego, California, and invited their daughters and later their two sons-in-law to join the board. Until the family discovered a common interest in microenterprise finance, their discussions about the foundation's mission were long and heated. But everyone agreed that they wanted to break new ground in philanthropy with their foundation; and once again the norms of the family culture prevailed. Joe took a risk building his business and wanted the foundation to do the same in philanthropy. For years, he had a cartoon Babe Ruth wrestling on his desk; His caption read: "Babe Ruth got it right 1,330 times." As Joe says, "Defeat is inevitable. It's part of daring. So I say to my family, listen kids, you can kick us if we fight the system, but we will.

The Jacobs Family Foundation has had many successes, but also some disappointments. By taking risks, you made mistakes and misjudged the leadership qualities of certain people. But what some families see as a failure, the Jacobses see as valuable lessons. Undaunted, they are confident that they are on the right path.

The tradition

All families have traditions that are passed down from generation to generation. In the old days, when the whole extended family lived in one place, traditions were integrated into everyday life and kept alive by the elders of the family. When family branches split and elders died, traditions often died with them.

With family members scattered across the country, families now have to work hard to create and maintain their traditions. The O'Neill family, for example, organizes triennial meetings for the entire clan: about 235 relatives who live in the United States. Also, for a branch of the clan whose members want to get together more often, there is an annual weekend get-together each summer that is attended by nearly half of the family. Usually, one person in the family takes the initiative in organizing family events; In the O'Neill family, that person is usually Bill O'Neill. To accompany this large family, he prints and distributes a clan telephone directory, which he updates annually.

Several curators interviewed for this guide mentioned the traditional summer get-togethers where the family gathers to have fun and relax, usually at the grandparents' summer house or at a family camp. Some say that through childhood experiences in these places they first developed a sense of belonging to something larger than their immediate family.

For example, the Pardoe family has run a family farm in New Hampshire for 200 years. Purchased in 1796, the property was continuously occupied by family members until the death of the family matriarch, Helen Pardoe, in 1988. Ownership and management of the property has now passed to the younger generation. Although the youngest members of the family live on both coasts, they still regard the farm as their symbolic family home.

“My grandmother was very present in the family,” says Charles Pardoe II, “and we were all very close to her. The farm symbolizes the values ​​that my grandmother lived and passed on to us: a united family, hard work and a positive attitude.”

The property remains a family gathering place, and as the property's current owners are also directors of the Samuel P. Pardoe Foundation in Washington, DC at least one of the foundation's meetings is held there each year. The family foundation is now looking at ways to fund educational and charitable programs that use the farm's fields, barns and livestock for their activities.

Not all traditions are formal practices or celebrations; some are habits of doing things that go unchallenged. Often, family members think and behave a certain way because "it's always been that way." When families establish family foundations, they often structure those foundations according to the same traditions. For example, foundations that do not have offices of their own often hold meetings in elders' homes (the traditional meeting place). Likewise, families with a tradition of delegating authority for business and investment decisions only to the male family member or family elder often establish a similar hierarchy in the foundation.

However, traditions respected within the household may be questioned when transferred to the foundation. Family members brought together under different circumstances and in a very different arena may not be as willing to conform to the usual traditions when they become trustees. Sometimes, even the heads of households themselves recognize that a different governance structure is needed for incorporation.

conformity

Family cultures vary greatly in their tolerance of differences. Some demand absolute loyalty to the culture's values ​​and see any deviation from the norm as a threat to the well-being of the family. Some go so far as to cut off all contact with family members who have different worldviews or lifestyles.

When families of this cultural type establish foundations, they impose the same compliance requirements on patrons. There is often little or no discussion, and new voices or perspectives on issues are discouraged. A female trustee, granddaughter of the founder of a large southern foundation, shares her experience joining the board as a middle-aged woman. She married at nineteen to escape what she called an oppressively decent home life and lived on the West Coast until her divorce a few years ago. Back in her hometown, she was looking forward to working on the family council and saw the foundation as an opportunity to reintegrate herself into the community.

In his absence, control of the board passed from his grandmother, the founder, to his father and then to his three brothers, who have followed the same "cutting edge" approach to growing the business over the past eight years. 🇧🇷 He began meeting with community members to learn more about the foundation's funding areas and to explore new approaches the board could take to support local groups. Encouraged by her findings, she recommended inviting some of these people to speak at the next panel meeting. The board rejected her proposal.

"They reacted like I was a traitor to the family," she says. "They see any change in the way my grandmother and father did things as a betrayal. It's frustrating that they close the door on new ideas, because with the amount of money we donate each year, this foundation can be a real strength. of change in this city."

Other families, like the Stranahans, go out of their way to make sure everyone is heard. In 1956, Duane and Virginia Stranahan founded the Needmor Fund in Boulder, Colorado, with funds from the Champion Spark Plug family business, founded by Duane's father and uncle. The Stranahans are a large family (Duane and Virginia had six children, who later had sixteen children), and their politics range from conservative to progressive. Despite their diversity, they attach great importance to inclusion.

“My grandfather is a quiet man who is an examplenoimpose your views on others,” said Abby Stranahan, current CEO. "He wants the family to work together and he trusts them to make good decisions."

The family's tolerance for diversity was tested in the 1970s, when both the family and the foundation faced a crisis. Duane and Virginia were divorced, as were several other family members, and others left the family home in Toledo, Ohio. Meanwhile, Virginia left the board and the third generation members, politicized by events at the time, had their own ideas about how to donate money.

To maintain unity and encourage family commitment, the foundation revised the trust agreement. Under the new guidelines, any family member who contributes $1,000 to the foundation is considered a voting member of the foundation. In addition, the family felt the need to develop a broad mission, encompassing the broad spectrum of political philosophies. To that end, they hired a strong and experienced CEO to help them overcome their political differences and find common ground in strengthening the funding base.

“Ironically,” says Stranahan, “the board's quest for a more unified, less politicized mission led to more progressive funding. What divided the family was not values ​​but rhetoric. When family members discovered that they had similar concerns and that those concerns intersected with political differences, they were able to focus on the foundation's goals."

This brief introduction to family culture reveals the many threads that unite two systems, the family and the foundation. As will become clear in later chapters, this influence is not unidirectional but reciprocal. The family is changed by the experience of the foundation's leadership, and the foundation in turn is affected by changes in the family. Founders die, and their leadership and management style often dies with them. In-laws join the family, importing beliefs, norms and traditions from their own family culture. The younger generation is joining in, reflecting a new set of values ​​and experiences, and often different funding agendas. Conflicts arise, circumstances change, and new challenges arise, requiring fiduciaries to reconsider their old habits or develop different strategies for dealing with situations.

And so life goes on unstoppable, as internal and external forces constantly shape and influence the cultures of both systems, family and foundation.