Raising children worthy of empires

Part II - 'The rich should leave their wealth to their children, not to charity'

My essay 'The rich should leave their wealth to their children, not to charity' gained hundreds of thousands of views and an overwhelmingly positive reception, for which I am grateful.

The central contention of the essay was that the root cause of the twisted practice of giving away one’s children’s inheritance is a failure of parenting: the failure to raise children worthy of stewarding great wealth.

It is natural, then, that I have received many requests for a follow-up piece which answers the question ‘How does one raise aristocratic children worthy of stewarding great wealth?’. Here I will attempt to do this - both to answer the call and for my own sake, as a father of young children.

A young Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

I am somewhat qualified to offer advice on this front; not because I come from a family of great wealth (I do not), but because I come from a family with a history of service to one of the great European aristocratic families. My own family, though not aristocratic, has been granted modest heraldry. I grew up with and remain friends with people from wealthy families, both aristocratic and non-aristocratic.

As the eldest son of the eldest son stretching back to when records began, I will one day inherit stewardship of my family. I am currently in possession of much of the material which corresponds to this role. Below is my family crest, together with a matching shield that my wife painted for my young son to play with. I can post some other items in the Becoming Noble Chat if people are interested.

(I have redacted the family motto as this would make it a little too easy to look all of us up. No doubt one of my heraldry sperg readers can identify us anyway - if you wish to show off please directly message me rather than posting in the comments!)

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I have informally questioned a few relevant friends on this subject of discussion, to supplement my own thoughts. I have not asked them to go ‘on the record’.

After my original post, Will Tanner, Editor of The American Tribune, sent me a provocative 2022 study which serves as a strong foundation for the arguments that will follow. This is ‘Trajectories of Aristocratic Wealth, 1858–2018: Evidence from Probate’ by Matthew Bond and Julien Morton.

The extensive evidence examined in the piece dismantles two falsehoods which those who attempted to criticize my original essay relied upon:

1. Inheriting great wealth necessarily corrupts children;

2. This corruption results in inherited wealth being largely squandered within a few generations.

In short, the study examines legal information about the inheritance of thousands of hereditary peers (members of British aristocratic families) over many generations.

Two of the authors’ findings are particularly relevant:

1. Aristocratic families gain wealth at a faster rate than the rest of the population, even when exposed to new pressures such as the industrial revolution and the rise of modern capitalism. The only things that slow them down are periods of exceptional inheritance taxation and wars in which aristocrats disproportionately die.

2. This faster rate of wealth expansion cannot be dismissed as ‘wealth creating wealth’. There is something special about the oldest families, which show the most stability of wealth growth. These families have outlasted and outperformed the ‘new money’ peerages granted to the families of tremendously wealthy individuals in the interwar period, many of which have faded into obscurity. Now, it is the oldest families which are again leaving the largest average grants.

To sum up this curious state of affairs, non-landed new wealthy peers burst on the scene from 1885, but their preeminence disappeared by 2018, while the pre-1885 older peers, like the tortoise to the hare, are now among the wealthiest hereditary peers.

— Matthew Bond & Julien Morton, Trajectories of Aristocratic Wealth

What is it about these families that is special? What are their practices which set them apart and grant them such resilience, generation after generation?

I will outline some childrearing practices which I have heard variations of again and again from those who live and breathe this way of life: