Would you advise your DD to go into the trades?

Yes I would if I had a DD trying to decide on a career
I have a close female friend who is an electrician and electrical inspector, she normally works on commercial properties on long term maintenance contracts eg pubs and big retailers - loves her job

Umm some of those of us who went into manual work also have degrees and degree level qualifications.

I agree with pp.

a manual job done correctly will keep you fitter for longer.

imo it’s much more damaging sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day. I was much healthier in a manual job outdoors working with animals than I am now.

i think we’ll see an increase in issues with sedentary lifestyles soon too. When I first started in an office I was still relatively active, moving around the office, going to see colleagues, pick up texts from the library, across the road to the canteen. Now I sit, everything is delivered to my desktop, canteens are now a microwave in the office, so I barely move.

Define “financially able”. With loans? Rich enough not to need loans?

i was academically able, and financially with loans etc. I also had no clue what I wanted to do.

so I graduated with a shed load of student debt, which was comparatively little compared to now. This has meant when I did figure out what I wanted to do, I had a useless degree, too much debt and no ability to pay fees to do the degree to get me in the field I wanted.

the field I’m in now does not require a degree, and is better paid than the graduate jobs that do need my degree.

so I will advise my dd not to go to uni unless she knows what she wants to do and the degree will help. No point taking on 50/60k debt to get to the end, and realise the career you actually want needs a different degree, and be tied to a field you don’t want with no ability to retrain because you can’t afford the fees for a second degree. She can get a job and have a few years finding out what careers there are out there.

better to know what you want to do and find a degree to fit than have to make your career fit your degree that you chose at 18, with no clue why.

I've just seen a lot of incidences of people posting on threads like this to say they are advising their kids to go into the trades and avoid university.

I just think it's turning into a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It's certainly a good thing to make more people aware that trades are great careers which enable people to make good money and have a good standard of living and I agree that people shouldn't automatically default to going to university unless they have thought through what they want to get out of it.

But a career as a plumber or an electrician won't work for everyone for many reasons: not everyone wants to do this sort of work or has the aptitude for it so it shouldn't be positioned as the default choice for everyone.

Also while I acknowledge that there are probably too many kids going to university without a clear idea of why, it would be a shame if the pendulum swung too far back to a time 40 or 50 years ago when bright kids who could have careers which require tertiary education are discouraged from doing so because their parents lacked the imagination to see beyond "plumber and electrician for all". As PPs have suggested, if you're not made aware that there are other choices open to you you are unlikely to seek them out.

It's got to be about the child and what suits the child, as opposed to a response to an ideologically-driven belief that too many people are going to university.

Sure, he has a bad back and he might not be the high flyer he was in his prime, but was he still earning a good paycheck?

Let’s be honest that if life brings you trouble, money makes it much easier to face.

But also, I think a lot of posters on this thread are comparing jobs in the trades with professional work- due to OP's original question of course. Whereas I'd see them as a good alternative to traditionally female manual work- cleaning, care work etc.

See, I'm not sure about this. I recently dated a guy who had spent his entire professional life in a sedentary, desk based job, and he is fucked- massively unfit, with a bad back. In addition, as he gets older (and he's on fuckloads of meds), he's not the incredibly sharp tech genius that he was once 😬

I do wonder, knowing men, whether some of the manual trades physical degeneration comes from them not looking after themselves. I'm always careful in how I pick up and handle things, do yoga to keep my core strong, etc....I remember when I did a season picking daffodils, I was the only one who'd stop at the end of every row and do yoga stretches, and the other pickers thought I was mad. Guess who was the only one not complaining about their back at the end of the day though!

Absolutely not.
i have advised my child to get a job that requires her mind, but not her body. Bodies fail. Bodies get sick. Brains are generally better protected, though not always of course. If you have a top notch education and good skills, even if you get sick or injured, you can keep working.

trades are hard on a body. One good injury or a bad back can end the ability to work. Multiple people in my support group for my adult-onset disability who were in trades now struggle on benefits, while I was able to maintain my lucrative career.

we as a society need people to work in trades, but we have not yet figured out how to truly protect the people who choose that path and then hit bad luck. The spartan safety net available is not a life I want my child to risk

It depends on the trade, I wouldn’t ideally want any of ours to join a trade that is known for knackering your knees etc and I would make sure they were aware of pressures with self employment, lack of sick pay etc, I wouldn’t change the advice for just one of ours because shes a girl.

Mentioning jobs that would fit with their interests, but which they might not be aware of, yes definitely. Of course it's a lot easier for them to find out about jobs in areas that interest them now than it was pre-internet though, just typing in 'What jobs can I do with <X, Y & Z qualifications>?'

Obviously not everyone needs to go to university, but if they are academically and financially able to, why not? It potentially gives them more flexibility, especially if they don't yet know what job they want to do. Dd is in her 2nd year of uni and still hasn't a clue what she wants to do!

I think for some people it's a great career and increasingly for women: I have a close (female) friend who's done really well in painting and decorating and made loads of money and is so successful she now teaches it. So if she wants to do it then by all means encourage her. Yes there's sexism but it's no worse than in some industries.

On the other hand I'm a bit sceptical of this blanket assertion that everyone should go into trades and train as a plumber/carpenter because university is expensive etc. It's certainly a great option for some but not everyone wants to or has the aptitude to be a plumber or an electrician and if as many people go into it as there are Mumsnet posters talking about it there's going to be a massive glut in a few years.

I'm getting a bit tired of the kneejerk assumption that everyone should be encouraging their kids to do it. It's not going to be right for a highly academic child who dislikes hard physical work, or an artistic child or one who wants to work in food... horses for courses.

I'll definitely let them know about the wide range of careers open to them, yes. It wouldn't suit dd1 at all as she's very dyspraxic, but dd2 would get on well with it I think. I don't think it's their perogative to automatically take a 'flexible' job though, and as others have pointed out it's not actually flexible.

There is an app for female trades, it's called TaskHer. Not sure how nationwide it is but we've had good luck with it.

Yes this.

as a teen I had absolutely no idea of careers. My dad’s family were all trade, plumbers, electricians etc. my mum’s family sahm, or basic admin jobs. They had basic life advice typical of that background where if you got into uni they thought that opened the door to earning untold amounts of money.

obviously I knew there were teachers, doctors, vets, police, lawyers etc. people o came across in everyday life. tbh I’d have had no idea how to get into medicine or law even if I’d wanted to. Lots of things like I didn’t know pharmacy was a job, or accountancy. I didn’t know what a PhD was until I got to uni and met lecturers.

i’ve since found a job I think I’d have loved. But it requires a professional degree and I can’t afford fees and 3 years off work to retrain. Again, I didn’t even know it existed as a job until I happened to work in that area for a few years.

dd’s and I discuss every kind of job. From plumber to firefighter to nursery nurse. I’m also encouraging them to hold off uni if they aren’t absolutely sure what they want to do. Better to go at 25 with a career plan than do a degree for the sake of it at 18 then block yourself from retraining later.

I'm not sure if you're cut out for uni if you'd get tge dane job satisfaction from a trade.

I will encourage my dc to go into jobs that they show an interest in. I certainly wouldn't nudge them towards jobs they hadn't mentioned appealed to them.

@PurpleThistle7 we have this. Some days dd has to change an awful lot of car tyres. They're not light, she's 6ft tall and long in the body and knows she has to protect her back.

Yes if she was that way inclined. But much more likely she will go in to social policy or academia as that’s her passion.

I am reminding my daughter of this option but with a caveat that it means she’s at the mercy of her physical health if she is relying on strong hands etc. I unexpectedly have become very unwell in my 40s - can still work my office job but wouldn’t manage a physical job

My daughter became a joiner/ carpenter/ handy person.
She was making very good money being self employed.. but unfortunately Covid put her in a wheelchair.. she now has a neurosurgeon.. a Orthopaedic specialist.. a physio and OT nurse.
A Rheumatologist and other nurse/ specialist.
They are looking into if we're covid itself or the vaccines.

Oh yes once you have proved your self and they know you take no stick it gets easier. It's getting to that stage that's the bother.

That's what's good about aircraft maintenance - you're not even allowed to buy your own tools, let alone expected to (for safety reasons all tools must be owned and managed by the maintenance company whether you work directly for them or as a subcontractor)