> They say that wealth skips every other generation

Strangely, in all the empirical studies of socioeconomic status and its relations to family and environment, I've ever seen one detect that effect.

I suspect that the popular saying really just reflects that parents and children have high contact and lots of friction, and grandparents and grandchildren less so, and nothing about the reality of wealth or hard work.

my wife and i have the same concern. we fully intend to make them work as hard as we did. though theory is often more difficult to translate into actual practice. it's not feasible to move out of a good community that you spent your life working towards just so your kids can understand the meaning of what it's like to live poor, like your parents did.