I just finished watching the first season of HBO’s new show, Succession.
The basic premise is that you have a bunch of insecure, dysfunctional people tied together by a family fortune. When the Patriarch of the family has a stroke, bunch of drama ensues about how control of the company will be passed to the next generation. So the question is, is this situation something to aspire to, or is it a cautionary tale?
Because everyone in the family is so dysfunctional, it would be easy to look down on them. However, the important question is whether they are stronger individually or as a family. To me, the answer is clearly that they are better off together.
There is an important scene near the end of the season where one of the siblings does something that can threaten family control of the company. The other siblings confront him and he argues that they would be better off if they all just took their cut of the wealth and went their separate ways. But there is a clear sense that if they weren’t tied together, all of their lives would be much less meaningful. Despite everything they do to hurt each other, there is a powerful bond between them that makes each of them deeper.
This is a work of fiction, but it is a good example of the role that money can play in keeping a family together. Without the family fortune, the Roys wouldn’t be the Roys. They would each go about their separate lives, doing their own thing and talking to each other on holidays.
Of course, the Roy family culture could use some work. The father thinks he is doing everything for his children, but his attempt to maintain strict control has actually stunted their growth. When he gets a taste of mortality he starts to think more about how he can use his control to bring the family together, but it might be too late.
You need two things to keep a family together: shared money and shared culture. Neither of these things is trivial. In order to have shared money, you need to have money. Once we have money it isn’t easy to share it. And as the Roys demonstrate, even obscene amounts of money doesn’t make it easy to create a cohesive and healthy family culture.
Anyway, I invite you to watch the show. Even if only a few episodes. Then ask yourself: is that level of family connectedness something to strive for, or something we are better off without? By default, most families don’t have it. So if you think you are better off without it you are probably pretty safe. If you think it is a better way to live, you have your work cut out for you. Part of that work is building up enough money to convince your kids to stick together. And of course, if you want to keep the kids together, you have to keep the money together.
