Ottawa Business Journal:
Corinne aged 42; an only child is the second-generation member of her families distribution company. Having been in the business for the past ten years, she worked for both of her parents in the business, and seems to see eye to eye with her father, but feels anxious and gets annoyed easily with her mother.
Her parents were beginning the process of both estate planning and succession planning, and she was aware that she would be the heir apparent to the business, but found herself lacking confidence in her abilities and questioning herself in ways she never had before.
Women in family owned businesses have been the least focused group in the family owned business literature, yet more and more daughters are working for their fathers and mothers, and more and more women are inviting their children into their own business. Universally the expressions of not enough and too much are used to describe parental relationships with their next generation offspring. Not enough is universally expressed in father-son relationships. Not enough of dad, his lack of presence in the life of the next generation members, in the life of the family, in the life of his wife or grandchildren. Not enough is usually experienced by family members as distance and as conflict.
In mother daughter relationships as well as mother son relationships the expression of too much of mother is universally expressed. For daughters too much of mother is seen as too much closeness, with conflict being expressed as too close, too symbiotic, and too undifferentiated. In mother – son relationships the issue is usually the same, too much of mother.
For many women in family owned businesses the push to differentiate, to become one’s own person, is simultaneously felt as a tremendous pull to stay connected. For these women the push to become one’s own person is experienced as too far away, too disengaged and not feeling rooted. Too close meant to be too dependent, to be symbiotic, and to be forever enmeshed in a relationship with one’s mother, and how is one ever to grow up?
Photo by Ctd 2005