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| Best Practices: Financial Parenting |
A Will to Work
Mary Lowengard
09/01/2004
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For the Zaslows of philadelphia, hard work literally runs in the family.
Arnold Zaslow is one of three sons in the second of four generations behind
ATD-American, a firm that has grown from a small linen store to a 200-employee
enterprise. Zaslow is an outgoing man, who will tell you with a twinkle in his
eye how much he has to be proud of. There is his work, which he finds so
pleasurable that he often jokes he is retired because he loves coming to his
office. There is his family, which includes his and his brothers’ children—nine
cousins who were raised like siblings. “Not a bum in the bunch,” Zaslow remarks.
Now, the next generation is coming to maturity. His first grandchild, Jacob, 14,
will soon start his first part-time job at ATD-American. What will Jacob do? “I
have no idea,” Zaslow chortles. “But whatever it is, he’s going to be working
very hard, I promise you that.”
 Hard work, its lessons and the satisfaction
it brings is something Zaslow admits he obsesses over. It may well be that his
family’s success can be directly attributed to this obsession. Experts believe
that paid work experience during our teenage years, and an understanding that
work is the expected next step after a child’s education is completed, wards off
a Pandora’s box of potential problems. For children of wealth, says Joline
Godfrey, author of Raising Financially Fit Kids and founder of Independent Means
in Santa Barbara, Calif., “It’s not about working for money as much as working
for character. We see a huge difference in children who have grown up without
ever holding a job and those who do. The former group is way behind their peers
in terms of basic life skills, such as understanding the meaning of
responsibility, commitment and, in general, becoming a whole person.”
Indeed,
studies show that teenagers who hold part-time jobs actually do better in school
than their peers who do not, according to Paul Schervish, director of the Center
on Wealth and Philanthropy and a sociology professor at Boston College. Still,
“parents need to communicate to their children that work is not about just
holding a job or making money, but, ultimately, about being a productive member
of society and a good human being,” Schervish notes.
| “To give your children everything deprives them of the opportunity to
learn how to get it for themselves.” |
How should we as parents
best communicate this to our children? “Family values are absorbed and observed
on a day-to-day basis,” posits Barbara Hauser, Minnesota-based special counsel
in Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft’s Private Client Department and author of
Mommy, Are We Rich? Talking to Children About Family Money. Hauser also
advocates conducting ongoing and direct dialogs. “Family dinners provide a great
venue to share successes and setbacks,” she suggests. “These dinners will pay
off more than a thousand hours of lectures.” Moreover, experts say we should not
shield our children from mistakes we have made. We must discuss them openly and
instructively. As much as children gain from seeing us succeed, they learn much
from hearing about our challenges, as well.
Work and Purpose
Work is a critical component of an affluent child’s
financial education, akin to learning to manage money through an allowance or
developing a social conscience through philanthropy, experts say. For any child,
developing a sense of purpose in life is important, but it may be essential for
a child who stands to inherit substantial wealth that they may not perceive
themselves to have earned. “The healthiest families I’ve worked with—those with
kids now in their 20s and 30s—have established a strong sense of self-esteem,”
observes Anne Hargrave, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based educational
consultants Wealthbridge Partners, and former director of planning and
administration for the multiclient family office Rockefeller & Co. Work is
one of the key ingredients to building self-esteem. “If you are simply the sum
of your inherited qualities, psychologically you have no reason to exist,”
explains New York psychotherapist Lauren Howard.
TOP VIEW
Exposing our children to paid employment during their teenage years can ward off
a Pandora’s box of problems by building positive character traits. Experts aver
four steps to guide our scions: serving as parental role models; allowing
children to define their own passions; securing a work mentor; and giving
positive verbal feedback. |
In the Lauder family,
matriarch and cosmetic industry powerhouse Estée Lauder set the tone. She
“always talked openly about how she came from little and had to work hard to
build her business,” recounts Laura Lauder, who is married to a Lauder grandson
and is raising a fourth generation in California. She says her father-in-law,
Leonard Lauder, embraced this idea and finessed it, emphasizing the importance
not only of hard work, but also of philanthropy and downtime. “He preached that
balance is just as critical to success,” recalls his daughter-in-law. In her own
family, Laura Lauder and her husband set an example every day—they operate their
business out of their home, where their own children witness them working
diligently to run Lauder Partners, a technology investment enterprise that
focuses on allocating their family’s capital.
Giving That Takes
“Not encouraging or allowing children to work, in
effect, robs them of the satisfaction of achievement,” asserts Steven Leder,
senior rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and author of More
Money Than God. “To give your children everything deprives them of the
opportunity to learn how to get it for themselves.” Our children need to
experience firsthand the power of earning money and the vicissitudes of managing
it—even to the extent that they may mishandle or run out of it. Wealthbridge’s
Hargrave notes, “It’s really important for children to experience disappointment
that they have to work through. If you make it too easy for them, they will
never develop the resilience or courage to face true adversity as adults.”
Children without work experience of any sort are somehow adrift and prone to
depression—or worse, add experts. “We’ve all seen the results of kids with too
much time and too much money,” adds Leder. “It’s a potentially deadly
combination.”
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