When Family Members Are Also Business Owners: Is Entrepreneurship Good for Families?

This article represents a call to family scholars for help in examining the effects of business ownership on families. To demonstrate the importance of this call, we illustrate the extent to which new venture creation is encouraged by policymakers and estimate the number of families engaged in entrepreneurial activity around the globe. We then summarize emergent critiques questioning the glorification of entrepreneurship in general and review the limited body of scholarly work examining the effects on families in particular. We conclude by outlining potential research agendas for several domains of family scholarship, providing examples of the provocative questions that arise when business ownership is explicitly acknowledged as a factor likely to impact family dynamics and well‐being .