Generational wealth can be inherited. So can generational dysfunction.
We talk a lot about generational wealth. Fair enough. You work hard, make some decent decisions, hopefully avoid a few expensive ones, and try to leave the people coming after you with more options than you had. A home. An education. Financial security. Maybe a business they can build on. That’s a good thing.
But I have a question. While you’re thinking about what you’re going to leave them, have you thought about what you’re already handing over?
Because it’s not just money that gets passed down. It’s what people learn about working, winning, losing, relationships, arguments, responsibility, asking for help and what it takes to be loved. Some of those lessons are fantastic. Others? Well, you might want to check the instructions before passing them on.
And before anybody gets defensive, this isn’t about having a go at your parents. Or men. Or success. We can respect what our families did for us and still ask whether every lesson we picked up is worth keeping. Actually, I’d argue that’s a pretty responsible thing to do.
The Rules You Didn’t Know You Learned
Think about the home you grew up in. How did people handle a mistake? Did someone own it, apologise and move on? Or was there a week of silence? What happened when somebody needed help? Could they ask, or did everybody pride themselves on never needing anyone? When money got tight, was it discussed, or did the whole house just become tense and nobody said why?
You might have grown up with a father who spent every spare hour working. He wasn’t necessarily avoiding his family. He might have been trying desperately to give them what he never had. There’s love in that. There’s effort and sacrifice, too. But a child can appreciate the opportunities and still learn that being important means being unavailable. That’s how one generation can pass on a strength and a cost at the same time.
Or perhaps you grew up in a family where conflict was treated like danger. The safest thing was to agree, keep quiet or disappear until everybody settled down. You get very good at reading a room. Brilliant skill when you need it. Less brilliant when you’re 40, someone asks what you really think, and you’re still saying ‘whatever you want’ while quietly getting annoyed.
These aren’t universal stories. Families differ, and people respond differently to the same environment. The point is much simpler: by the time we’re old enough to question a family rule, we’ve often practised it thousands of times.
Does Any of This Actually Carry Across Generations?
Yes. And it’s worth getting the science right, because this is more than a catchy headline. Research has found measurable relationships between parents’ childhood adversity and certain outcomes for their children. A review bringing together 52 studies found associations between parents’ adverse childhood experiences and children’s mental-health difficulties. The associations weren’t enormous, and they didn’t apply equally to every outcome. But they were there.
Another major review examined 142 studies involving more than 227,000 parent–child pairs and found a modest association in the recurrence of childhood maltreatment across generations. That’s a serious finding. It tells us that some risks can continue through families. It does not tell us that a parent who experienced harm will inevitably harm their child. Plenty of people make different choices, often at considerable personal effort.
So how does it happen? There isn’t one neat answer. Family environments, stress, the way adults respond to children, the behaviours we watch, financial circumstances, wider social conditions and individual differences can all matter. Biological and epigenetic mechanisms are being investigated as well. But it would be a stretch to declare that your grandfather’s trauma has simply rewritten your DNA and settled your future. Human evidence hasn’t established that as a general rule.
What we can say, with confidence, is that intergenerational patterns and risks are real. We can also say that risk isn’t destiny. There’s no value in turning research into a sentence on somebody’s family. The useful part is noticing what has been learned, what still helps and what we now have the capacity to do differently.
Some of Your Inheritance is Brilliant
This part matters. If somebody taught you to finish what you start, keep your word, show up for people or find a way through a difficult situation, that’s worth holding on to. Some of the most capable people I’ve met were shaped by hard circumstances, not comfortable ones. The fact that a response began as a way of getting through something doesn’t automatically make it a problem.
I like competence. I like a man who takes responsibility. If your family taught you to work, save, be generous or stand by your mates, terrific. Keep it. The question is whether you still have a choice about when and how you use that strength.
Because independence is useful until you can’t accept help. Discipline is wonderful until resting makes you feel guilty. Keeping calm is valuable until you use silence to avoid every difficult conversation. Providing is loving until it’s the only way you’re prepared to show love. Same behaviour, different situation. Is it still helping? That’s what deserves a closer look.
We sometimes spend years trying to get rid of a part of ourselves without ever asking what it was originally trying to do. Maybe that part helped you survive. Maybe it protected someone you loved. Fine. Thank it for the job. Then ask whether it’s still the best person to have running the whole operation.
Being Good at Work Doesn’t Automatically Make Home Easy
If you’re working in finance, technology or business, you probably spend a fair amount of time solving problems. A deadline moves, a client needs answers, a team goes off course, something breaks. You work out the priorities and get it handled. That’s a skill. And it probably gets rewarded.
Then you get home and your partner says, ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ Suddenly you’ve got no appetite for another problem. Perhaps you start offering solutions before they’ve finished the first sentence. Or you defend the hours you’ve worked, explain why the last week has been ridiculous and point out everything you’ve done for the family.
Maybe everything you’ve said is true. It still might not be what they were asking.
A relationship isn’t another department to manage. Your mate might not want advice about his marriage. Your partner might not want a three-point recovery strategy with a meeting booked for Monday. Somebody may just want you to listen long enough to understand. And if you’re used to being the person with the answers, that’s surprisingly hard.
This isn’t a call to throw away ambition. Jobs are demanding. Businesses need building. Real bills need paying. There are seasons when you simply have to put your shoulder into the work. What matters is whether you can tell the difference between a demanding season you’ve chosen and an old rule that says you only count when you’re producing.
A New Country Doesn’t Necessarily Mean a New Pattern
There’s another interesting angle if you’ve built your career away from home. Moving to Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok or somewhere else in the region can be a wonderful opportunity. You learn quickly, meet different people and discover things about yourself you might never have noticed in the town where everybody knew you at 16.
It also gives you the opportunity to build a new life. But new surroundings don’t automatically change an old response. If you learned to keep quiet whenever a relationship got tense, that reflex can arrive on the plane with you. So can the belief that you must be capable all the time or that asking for support makes you less of a man.
I’m not suggesting international professionals are all lonely or disconnected. Far from it. I’m suggesting that when we change our external circumstances, it might be worth checking what internal habits came along for the ride. Otherwise we can spend a fortune creating a new life and keep having the same old argument in a different apartment.
What Are You Teaching When Nobody is Taking Notes?
Young people learn about money from conversations, examples and what they’re allowed to practise. They also notice the stuff adults don’t announce. What happens when somebody makes a mistake? Does a successful person treat the waiter with respect? Is everyone allowed to disagree? What does a man do when he’s tired or embarrassed?
You can fund an excellent education and still leave someone terrified of disappointing you. You can teach financial responsibility while making every money conversation feel dangerous. You can build a wonderful business and show the next generation how to lead with care, admit an error and fix it. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. But they’re worth noticing.
And you don’t have to be a father to have an influence. Your friends, the people you manage, your younger colleagues and the community around you all experience your version of success. They see whether you keep your promises when it’s inconvenient and whether you listen to somebody who has nothing to offer you commercially.
We all teach people what to expect from us. The question is whether that’s what we intended to teach.
Try This for Seven Days
Rather than turning the whole family into a psychology project, pick one habit you want to understand. Just one. Something you notice at work and in your personal life. Perhaps you jump straight to a solution, say yes before you’ve thought, go quiet during disagreement or find it difficult to let somebody help.
First, catch it happening. What’s going on? Who’s there? What are you trying to make happen—or avoid? Don’t start by calling yourself selfish, weak or broken. That’s rarely helpful. Be curious about it. You might discover the behaviour is doing a useful job. Great. You might discover that it was useful once and now comes with a cost.
Second, look at that cost. Not as a guilt exercise. Are you exhausted? Do people stop telling you things? Are you doing work somebody else could learn to do? Do you feel resentful because nobody knows what you want, even though you’ve never said it clearly? There’s your information.
Third, make one small change and see what happens. If you’re the fixer, try: ‘Do you want some ideas, or do you just want me to listen?’ If you go silent, you could say: ‘I need a little time to think. I do want to come back to this.’ If you normally agree immediately, try: ‘Let me check what I can actually commit to.’
You won’t become a different man in a week. Nor should you need to. Some habits were built over decades, and people may need time to trust that a change is real. If a relationship isn’t safe, don’t treat another conversation as a substitute for appropriate boundaries or professional support. But in ordinary situations, one honest adjustment can give you much more useful information than another month of promising yourself you’ll do better.
So, What Stays, and What Changes?
You don’t need to reject your family to choose a different response. You can love your father, respect his sacrifices and decide you’d like to be a bit more available to your own family. You can thank the people who taught you to work hard and still learn how to rest. You can be ambitious without making your performance the only interesting thing about you.
That, to me, is the exciting part. We may not have chosen the original rules, but we can get curious about whether they still fit. We can keep the strengths. We can practise something different where it matters. And when we get it wrong—and we will—we can take responsibility and have another go.
Keep building the wealth. I’d never tell a man to stop creating security or opportunity for the people he loves. Just remember that those people are learning from more than your bank account. They’re learning from how you use your time, what you do when you’re frustrated, how you treat somebody who disagrees with you and whether you can own a mistake.
So here’s the question I’d leave you with. When the people closest to you think about what they’ve learned from you, what do you want them to say?
And what would they say if you asked them today?
Sammy “Solution” Soames is a Sydney-based business and behaviour-change coach who learned to read people before he learned to read a balance sheet. A traumatic childhood sharpened his awareness of moods, words and what people often leave unsaid. He has spent years turning those survival skills into deeper empathy, genuine connection and better questions. With 30-plus years across banking, property, sales and business leadership, Sammy co-founded SSS Foods and now coaches through FTI Global. He also helps facilitate The Tribe of Brothers. His writing asks what success is really for—and what the people closest to us experience along the way.
