“My great-grandparents came to America from the old country in search of a better life… ” a typical family narrative may begin. Such evolving tales of how our ancestors loved, fought, struggled and triumphed provide a powerful theme that defines and buttresses our families across generations. They explain the past, justify the present and set forth expectations for the future. They often establish an exclusive common ground of traditions, sentimental facts and convenient fictions. Family narratives are, literally, the ties that bind.

Such ties may change radically in the face of material success. Traditional tales of survival give way to those of professional triumph and social ascendancy. At this point, the narratives become a study in contrasts: “We came from nothing, but now we are wealthy and powerful.” The story of the journey from penury to privilege illuminates the price that a particular generation paid so that subsequent generations may live as they do. Furthermore, it bestows legitimacy on these succeeding generations by explaining the origins of the financial and social status they enjoy. Most Americans know the story of John D. Rockefeller, the severe Baptist oil man whose single-mindedness and canny opportunism created what was once America’s greatest fortune. His heirs, generations removed from the fruitful efforts of their family patriarch, bear a name that is now synonymous with their famous family narrative.

Reaching far beyond simple explanations of origin, however, these stories serve up an efficacious dose of guilt and expectation for those who follow wealth creators: “Look at what we did for you,” it admonishes. “You must strive to live up to our example.” The first affluent generation—those who actually created wealth—often establishes this expectation, all the while harboring doubts about the ability of their heirs to maintain and grow the newly minted family fortune. Likewise, subsequent generations often find it challenging, if not impossible, to live up to this example, and match the successes of their forebears.

Tales of how our ancestors loved, fought, struggled and triumphed define and buttress our families across generations.

For the generation that follows family wealth creators, the family narrative is immediate and all-consuming. Often referred to as the “shadow generation,” the children of wealth creators lived the defining family story with their parents, witnessing firsthand the struggle and the triumph. This experience often engenders in them a powerful sense of loyalty to their parents, and to the established patriarchal or matriarchal family order. It can inspire them to follow in their parents’ footsteps, or it can undermine individualism and self-motivation. The story of family success, it seems, spawns equally compelling sagas of success and failure.

The power of the family narrative to unify and motivate diminishes over time. Those who lived the defining stories pass away, taking with them much of the immediacy and potency the stories need to unify successive generations. These narratives also fall victim to revisionist history, perhaps crafted by those who did not, for whatever reason, choose to adhere to accepted tenets. The daughter who was not allowed to participate in the management of a family business solely because of her gender will tell succeeding generations a wholly different story than will her brother, who, by virtue of his gender, became the CEO. Other estranged family members may harbor tremendous anger over family dynamics, yet fearing financial banishment, may repress that anger, expressing it only through the stories of pain and dysfunction they pass along to their children.

Leslie Mayer, a psychologist and CEO of the Mayer Leadership Group in Wayne, Pa., works with affluent families on leadership and succession issues through the Wharton Global Family Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania. She recalls how one iron-willed matriarch told her son and heir, “Do not tell your wife stories of the family and of your brothers. It will only disturb family unity.” The matriarch sensed a threat from an outsider, an unwelcome storyteller who, by virtue of her marriage, possessed the power to subvert the official family narrative. Only by maintaining the “purity” of the story, the matriarch believed, could the family remain united.