How the Wealthy White Family Forbids Wealth Redistribution
Six unspoken rules that haunt our relationship to money
One of the key obstacles to wealth redistribution that I see as a money coach are the ways my wealthy clients are indoctrinated into inherited, unspoken rules about what it means to be a “good family member” or to be “a good steward of wealth.” It is precisely those rules that reinforce endless wealth accumulation and convince people to make financial choices against their own values.
In this post, I’ll explain the rules of the wealthy, white family and how they shape the seemingly personal beliefs about money and family that many wealthy people carry. These are also the rules that shape “wealth-defense industries” such as financial planning, investment management, marriage and divorce law, estate planning, tax planners and family offices, so any advice from these professionals will be rooted in these beliefs and rules.
In next week’s post, I’ll offer a liberatory guide on living outside of those rules—stay tuned!
Rule #1: The nuclear family is the only legitimate form of family
The legally privileged and idealized structure of family in the United States is the nuclear family: typically, two married parents and their biological or legally adopted children. Many people in the U.S. are socially pressured to get married and have biological children and to have that specific setup be a measure of “success.”
While BIPOC, poor and working class, immigrant, disabled and queer communities model many different ways of shaping family and resource sharing, the nuclear family teaches us that we only belong to one very tiny unit of people, and we are only financially responsible to them. The expectation that two adults earn enough money and have enough time to run a household and spend sufficient time with their children can cause incredible stress. Leisure time and financial ease are a privilege of the few who can afford to hire others to run their households and raise their children. The nuclear family structure works the easiest for wealthy families and financially benefits wealthy families.
While we are taught that starting a nuclear family is “natural” and an obvious expression of love, the nuclear family is a relatively recent phenomenon started for economic reasons. Historically, wealthy, white, British, male elites narrowed the family structure to clarify the process of inheriting private property and wealth. Because wealth is traditionally passed down through the paternal line, men demanded “fidelity” and monogamy to ensure their heirs would inherit wealth and land. The legal structure of the family is the key to maintaining privatized wealth and property and denying the rest of the world access to it. In addition to pressuring people to marry and have children, this rule condemns divorce, polyamory, infertility and the choice to not raise children, all of which make inheritance more complicated.
Rule #2: Do not share money with anyone outside the family
My clients are taught that it’s wrong and unnatural to share money beyond their biological family. Even if the family acquires far more money than it needs, they still shouldn’t let that money leave the family boundaries because supposedly money ruins other relationships. (This rule conveniently ignores the common pattern of money ruining familial relationships!)
