What’s it like to be the child of a white-collar criminal?

I’ve been listening to this BBC podcast, Lives Less Ordinary, that tells people’s stories. It’s interesting, also surprisingly lowbrow given that it’s BBC. For example, here are three typical shows: “Stolen as a baby, I called my abductor ‘Mom’,” “The bullet that ended our friendship,” and “He counted 3, 2, 1 – then stabbed me in the heart.” Also, they did a completely credulous show on Diana Nyad (see here for backstory). Mostly I like it, though.

Anyway, here’s the point of today’s post. Lives Less Ordinary has multiple episodes about people who grew up in criminal families and then, sometime during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood had to come to terms with what it meant to grow up around adults who were involved in violent crime. Sometimes it took awhile–I can only imagine that it’s something you’ll never get over.

So here’s my question. What’s it like to be the child of a white-collar criminal?

The reason I ask is because, with white-collar crime, it seems that it would be easier to remain in denial, to imagine that the parent did nothing wrong or that it was just a misunderstanding. I’d think that it would ultimately worse someone to avoid coming to terms with the crimes committed by the parent. But I don’t really know. On this blog we often discuss white-collar crime or white-collar unethical behavior, and sometimes I kind of wonder what it would be like to be in the family of such a person.

P.S. Last year we discussed what it was like to be the parents of a white-collar criminal, but this was a bit different than the Lives Less Ordinary stories in that the parents in question actively profited from their son’s crimes. Just horrible parents, in my opinion. Standing by your child even when he does wrong, that I understand. But joining in the crime . . . jeez. The parents are supposed to be the mature ones here! Talk about setting a bad example.