Were you steered into your career by your parents ?

[Lardlizard]

How much guidance do you give you ?

Did they

My parents were very laid back and did not steer me in any way, other than to just tell me to do my best. I’m now mid 40s and have drifted in and out of dead-end, boring jobs since I was 17. Obviously I don’t blame them for this, but I often wish they’d have given me a little bit of guidance either way. It’s a fine line between being too pushy and not pushy at all!

My parents didn’t have a clue about careers and I made loss of career mistakes I wouldn’t have if someone had been able to give me good advice

No - but I was steered into a course of study that's made it easy to pivot between decent jobs

They were no help at all, quite the opposite.

My parents pushed me towards Oxbridge, with a view to my being a lawyer. I went to Oxford to study English, and became a freelance writer/editor/translator, which they secretly hate because it's not a "secure job" apparently. I love it though.

My dad pushed and pushed me but didn't actually offer any help or advice when it came to studying. He wanted me to be a solicitor just because they earn a lot of money and that was all he would entertain.

As a result, that's all I really looked into doing. However I wasn't academic enough and lacked the confidence to go into criminal law (although it does still interest me).

For my son, I'm going to try and see where his skills lie and then show him careers which may interest him. I'm not naive and realise money is important, but passion and job satisfaction is worth so much more.

Subject - not at all. They worried I was doing it (biochemistry) because it was so different from anything they knew about.

Though the fact they'd both done PhDs obviously gave me the idea that research could be a career, though like both I then did something very different (and different to both of them).

I wasn't guided - I was told that I wasn't going to do any of my 3 choices of career by my mother.
I hated her for it (she did the same to my sister), so allowed my kids to make their own choices as I didn't want them growing up resenting me, as I did with her for my whole life. I'm still angry about it nearly 40 years later.

Absolutely not. I think my dad might have liked me to go to agricultural college, but neither of them had any experience at all in what I studied or became. DH was the first in his family to go to university and I still don't think his parents actually know what he does.

No not at all, I found a job I loved eventually but as such I don’t know how to guide my own DC well enough now and am worried I will either be too pushy or not give the right guidance

Not at all, the only steer my father gave was that he suggested I didn’t become a chef, a teacher or a policewoman.

middle DS was set on doing a particular course, I spoke to someone at the uni. about something else, she happened to have a DS who had done the course and warned us against it, no jobs only voluntary work and flights paid for by himself or wealthy parents.

We then did some investigating, had family discussions, he listened. So he did a different course where there was a chance of a job which paid at the end of it. He did enjoy the other course and has enjoyed an amazing career, his employer paying for the flights

Your children do, however, need to do something they enjoy imo.

I remember having a crisis about what to study at university I had chosen two very different subjects. My dad made me write a list of pros and cons. Basically I really wanted to study history, I loved it, but there was very limited career choices. The degree I did enabled me to get a sponsor and a very good career out of it. It wasn’t my favourite subject but I still liked it.

My dad explained to me that you can have a passion for anything in life but it’s very hard to get a good career out of it. Nothing stopping me doing it as a hobby, or get a good career and then retrain.

I saw a lot of financial hardship growing up. I will be explaining this to my children, but if they want to go to university to study a BA, or a course with limited career options I won’t be subsidising them.

It’s all very well, following yiur dreams, it’s better to live in the real world and understand the importance of a good career.

No they have no knowledge of what I do really, and no experience in my field. They did however always support and encourage me in everything and were always there to listen and give objective advice when I requested it. I still will talk things over with them to this day - they are interested in what I do, and can offer opinions and support on broader issues. I have even been known to draw diagrams of particularly tricky problems for my Dad, sometimes you're so deep into it a layman might have the perfect answer!

They are everything I could have wanted as I've always felt they were in my corner but letting me figure it out for myself. I'll try to do the same for my DCs. My Mum did advise me not to be a teacher like her though, but I know she'd still have supported and helped me if I'd wanted to.

At first I thought it all all. Neither of my parents are academic and kind of see school as something to do until you can go to work. They both work minimum wage jobs and lots of hours. I do similar in a job I adore. I suppose they didn't push me in any particular way but I learned the same work ethic.

My mum encouraged my interests which from a young age was law. Made my mind up from around 13 that I would become a solicitor. She didn't push me though and left the actual choice of how to get there up to me.

My dad never had much of an opinion and just went with the flow.

Ended up studying law at university and promptly decided during my second year while I loved law, I didn't want to be a solicitor.

Following my degree I decided to follow careers linked to the areas of law I enjoyed. First was property (lasted 18 months) and then after that I went into tax.

Never looked back. Absolutely love my job, it uses the law and as I do advisory work it means I get a variety of different problems to solve.

Helps that I probably earn more with better hours than if I actually became a solicitor, purely because I wouldn't chase a London salary and regional salaries are pretty poor in comparison.

My parents were both in the same profession and assumed they were founding a dynasty (it's a career that does run in families to a higher than average degree). When I chose GCSEs which would ultimately exclude me from the academic path to that career my father didn't speak to me for over a month.

After that they were disappointed with pretty much everything I did - I remember my mother saying "oh well I suppose that's something, as you only did English" when I phoned to tell her I'd got a first in my undergraduate degree...

So hmm they did try, but I knew from growing up in their house that I didn't want the lack of work life balance, the rushing in late and cooking dinner with my coat still on, the being hours late to pick my children up because work always came first etc that their profession brought, and they didn't seem to consider anything else worthy.

My parents gave no advice at all, except that Dad wanted me to go to Cambridge like he did.
I wasn’t clever enough. My A levels were a big disappointment to him. My degree was fashionable at the time, but put me off the industry. I ended up in fashion which was fun but poorly paid and London-centric. I retrained at 40.
However, DH’s mother pushed him non-stop despite never having worked herself, and tried to dictate what he did and he ended up leaving his 1st degree because It just wasn’t him (PPE in Durham) and doing a degree that his then-girlfriend was doing leading him to a career that sounds impressive, but he’s never enjoyed and is counting down the days till he can leave (once DC leave school).
We’re hoping to strike the happy medium for our own children.
DH wants to be hands-off, I want to be as supportive as possible. Who knows if we’ll mess up 🤷‍♀️

I am a nurse, and have wanted to be since I was 3. My parents supported me in that, I don't recall them ever trying to change my mind, even though they paid for me to go to private school and probably assumed this would lead to a very good degree and high-earning career. My mum came to careers' talks at school (the talk was on careers in the NHS and heavily swayed towards medicine), they let me make my own choices about which universities to apply to even though I applied to places I barely knew where they were with no good reason and drove me hundreds of miles or put me on trains to interviews.
My parents were both the first in their families to go to university and have professional jobs, and my siblings have gone into similar careers to them while I am doing something very different.

They certainly encouraged me to pursue the path I wanted but didn’t really have the knowledge or skills themselves to steer me in any way. I couldn’t ask for more loving or supportive parents though.

I was steered away from a particular career route by my mum. It turns out it was the same field as a relative she couldn’t stand (I didn’t know then).

So there you go. For a very good reason. Spite. 🤨

Steered and pushed. I got the qualification. I do the job. I don’t like it. Was steered away from what I really wanted to do. Still regret it. I’m too old to retrain, or more realistically, too poor to.

No. The expectation was I would get a job at 16. Any job.
I ended up putting myself through uni with loans and a part time job. Had a decent professional career until I became a Sahm.
My parents had no clue about further ed careers being from working class stock.
I would hope to steer my dc into careers they would enjoy but also earn them a decent salary. Hopefully supportive not pushy.