It is a popular theme in literature-a once great, powerful family that deteriorates from generation to generation-eventually the clan is reduced to living in poverty, in a decaying old mansion. Mental illness usually figures into this as well-the heirs are no longer sharpo businessmen, but wealth-destroyers.
Is there any truth to this legend?
Take the Ford family-great Grandpa Henry Ford founded the dynasty, and became rich. His son (Edsel) was running the business, but died prematurely. Grandson Henry II was an OK manager, but now the firm is run by an outsider (Allen Mulalley).
Still, the great-grandchildren seem to be an OK lot-most of them have university degrees.
Then we have the Kenndy clan-they seem to have regressed-most of the great grandchildren are not active in business or academia, and some have active alcohol/drug problems.
Do families of great wealth find it hard to stay on top? Do their heirs have a natural tendency to squander wealth?
I’d be interested in any hard studies done on this.
It seems to me that men who create such fortunes and attain such power are a hard act to follow, even for their own offspring. Therefore, it seems like any family they have has nowhere to go but down.
I came here to mention “Paris Hilton”, but that would be crude.
All joking aside, a lot of it seems to be in the attitudes instilled in the generations. Most Trust Babies have a lot of money given to them just because they were born into the family. They have not had to work as hard as grandpa or great-grandpa did for his fortune, so therefore, it would seem their attitudes about wealth, class, and hard work would be quite different.
Some families of great wealth require their children to work for it. I have read that Warren Buffett does not believe in passing wealth on to his heirs, and so they have had to make their own way in the world. Of course, they won’t have to travel the exact same road, since just their last name has the potential of opening doors, but they still have to find their own niche.
I see it as more the natural ebb and flow of the world. Even the great families who do things right will have a hard time maintaining greatness. People are different. Times change so even if the characteristics that assisted the great one to their lofty tower breed true, those characteristics may not help future generations as much. It is also hard to maintain a fortune when you start dividing it up.
You also have the fact that you are comparing different sized generations. Is it fair to point out the Kennedy grandchildren who have alcohol problems to one Kennedy grandfather? Can a large generation have every single member be as great as the founder?
Well, the last couple of generations of the Eaton family ran that business into the ground, and it was picked up by its great rival Sears…
Yes, if a big exaggerated. Families naturally tend towards mediocrity over time. Geniuses and idiots both over a generation or two tend to produce offspring of about average ability.
And/or they might be far enough away from the founding generation that they’re not guided, inspired and motivated by the original entrepreneur.
Can’t resist the opportunity to post a great bit from one of my favorite plays…
There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications — to put it plainly! . . . The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left — and Stella can verify that! — was the house itself and about twenty acres of ground, including a graveyard, to which now all but Stella and I have retreated.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche to Stanley, after he accuses her of having swindled Stella out of her inheritence, Scene 2.
Found here.
WAG: this is becauses geniuses get hotter mates, and idiots who are succesful in getting mates are probably hot.
And thus equilibrium is maintained in beauty and brains 
I can speak to this because of a “six degrees of separation” thing with an example:
My older half-brother David for many years was a (non-gay, I kid you not) friend, roommate, companion, guardian and eventually the legally adopted son* of a man named Jim Beck. Jim was one of the last branches of a formerly notable family that got rich back at the start of the nineteenth century by getting in on the ground floor of the Industrial Revolution. By the twentieth century the descendents had started to become idle rich while the family fortune dwindled as the businesses created by their founder became obsolescent. By the 1960s the family was a “name” in society but had almost no wealth left. The whole story is documented in a book called Broken Blood: The Rise and Fall of the Tennant Family**
*the best I can explain this is that it was similar to the ancient Roman practice of adopting someone as an heir as a token of respect and affection.
**by Simon Blow ISBN 0-571-13374-6
Did the guy even try to groom him?*
- I mean, to learn the family business, take it over and make it profitable?
I just found some info on the family founder: Charles Tennant - Wikipedia
The family business was sold in the Sixties. Jim had a sort of gentleman’s lifetime allowance or inheritance but was by no means rich.