Family, tradition and passing things on

Families pass on far less than they used to, and I'd separate two kinds of loss. Objects are the smaller issue — people move more, homes are smaller, and most possessions now are meant to be replaced anyway. The bigger loss is skills and trades, where a shop or a craft that took decades to build simply stops because the next generation reasonably wants something else. I don't think that should be resisted through pressure; obliging a child to take on a family business is a good way to destroy both the business and the relationship. What can be done is documentation — recording how something was made, writing the recipes down — so the knowledge survives even if the shop doesn't. Governments can help by supporting the crafts that are genuinely at risk, but they cannot manufacture the desire to continue them.