Cultural capital is perhaps the most intangible of the forms of capital. It primarily has to do with the mindsets, values and ethos that the family carries forward from generation to generation. In modern America, these traditions often only go back one, two or at most three generations. It is rare to find families that have stories that reach further back than that, though they do exist and are quite instructive.
One important piece of cultural capital has to do with the history of the family and the enrollment of each generation into that that history. When families do endure, one typically finds that the stories they tell contain within them deep expressions of family values. These stories create a type of mentoring that ensures that these values will live on. Likewise, we find perspective and mindsets that create the cognitive understanding of the family and its place and role in the world. The creation of these mindsets, and their evolution over time, do much to shape the success of the individuals in the family and the destiny of the family as a whole.
We find, however, that cultural capital extends well beyond values and history. Each family develops its own patterns engagement with one another, but in successful families these patterns serve to both liberate the individuals within the family to achieve their fullest potential and do much to create an interlocking set of accountabilities that tie individual back into the family. This dance between autonomy and belonging becomes critical in the success of families across generations. There are other patterns that are emergent and self-organizing with the culture of families, and these also operate in recognizable patterns. Often there are paradoxical structures in play between power and love, rules and spontaneity, action and learning, and so on. The shape of the family culture is found in the family negotiates these paradoxes.
Questions:
- How would you describe the family culture in your most successful intergenerational family clients?
- How does the work that you do take family culture into account?