Wealth of Wisdom

CHAPTER 60Facilitating Grandchild-Grandparent Philanthropy

James E. Hughes, Jr.

To introduce this practice I think it's useful to reinterpret the Chinese proverb, “Grandparents and grandchildren are the natural enemies of the parents.” I would reinterpret that wisdom as, “Grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies.”

History and literature, as well as my own personal experience, all indicate that a grandparent's relationship with his or her grandchildren is filled with pure love. Grandparenting offers the chance to teach the family positive virtues, stories, and myths without the parental obligation of being concerned with discipline and passing on by admonition the family's negative experiences.

Often in my work with families, the grandparents ask me what role they can play in family governance. Frequently they feel unsure of their relationships with their adult children and are all too aware of the missteps that they made in parenting. They seek with their children a mature modus vivendi, while recognizing that past difficulties in their relationship cannot be expunged. Necessarily with this history, the roles in family governance of older parents and their adult children are those of equals seeking to preserve the family. Also, given their respective ages, the adult children will normally be taking on the active governance responsibilities in investing and administering the family's financial wealth. The senior generation will be moving to the roles of observers and, ...