Keeping it all in the family

Australia’s first lady of food Margaret Fulton celebrated her 85th birthday last week with a gala dinner in the Strangers’ Dining Room at Sydney’s Parliament House, an event which coincided with the arrival in my letter box of the “blad” (a pre-publication sampler of a book’s content) of My Thrifty Kitchen by Suzanne & Kate Gibbs. The food director of BBC Australian Good Food, Suzanne is Margaret’s daughter. Kate, described in the book’s press release as "a third-generation foodie and home cook", is Suzanne’s daughter and Margaret’s granddaughter. Obviously the apple that is a passion for food and cooking doesn’t fall far from the Fulton/Gibbs family tree.

The phenomenon of professions running in families, when there isn’t an actual family firm for second and third generations to work in, is one I’m interested in, especially since we Wrights, like the Murdochs and the Packers, are a multi-generational media family (albeit on a marginally less affluent scale!).

Growing up, one of the few pieces of career advice my mum, an advertising copywriter, and dad, a photo-journalist-turned-PR-exec, gave us girls was not to pursue a career into the media and yet here we both are. My sister Sam, the art director of a glossy newspaper magazine, even went so far as to marry another magazine art director.

So how did Mum and Dad fail so spectacularly in steering us away from the stressful, deadline-driven, often poorly paid and at times head-bangingly frustrating world of media towards something more sensible like, oh, I don’t know, medicine or accounting? Leaving aside our shared lack of interest in anything vaguely scientific or mathematical, I think it’s because my parents showed us by their everyday example how exciting and rewarding working in such a vibrant, creative industry could be.

As children Sam and I were exposed to a myriad of interesting, artistic people and challenging, exciting ideas and experiences. How could we have ended up doing anything different? These days, I often look at my niece and nephew growing up in the midst of Sam and husband John’s large extended “family” of friends – photographers, artists, cartoonists, graphic designers, journalists and editors – and I can’t help but wonder if the kids will be as attracted to a career as we were.

What the media will actually be by the time Hope and Jack are ready to enter the workforce is a completely different question...