To think that most families have a common/most popular occupation?

[workit]

I am from a large family...over 40 cousins and several aunts and uncles

In my family there's 12 nurses!! The rest are a mix of
3 teachers
4 engineers
1 doctor
1 accountant
2 electricians
1 plumber
1 microbiologist
1 speech therapist
1 hairdresser
1 counselor
3 in IT
The rest are in uni or school

A friend of mine comes from a large family also but the most common occupation in her family is teaching. Does this happen in most families? Is there a popular occupation in your family?

I think there are common themes that run in families. For example it’s geography in mine - four of my close family have geography degrees meaning our professions are similar if not the same. I think it stems from being shown / taught things by your parents in that general subject - eg map reading, camping, talking about countries, going to different places on holiday that are interesting, having atlases around, pointing out different types of rocks and trees etc when out, trying out geography/biology/geology themed clubs as children then visiting old houses, country parks etc. When it came to geography at school, I and my family found the subject easy because it was ingrained in our lives already.

Your family is big OP. But if you're taking cousins into account too ours would be:

4 teachers
2 Architects
2 Counterterrorism type job stuff (security) - that's my brother and SIL
1 IT consultant
1 Postie
1 electrician

Beauticians and hairdressers on the female side of my family (and going back in time a lot of models and, weirdly, nuns!) And a local councillor.

The men were/are all builders and welders and train conductors and power plant workers.

The gender division there!

Also why does everyone here have massive families? I can count about 10 adults in mine and a lot of them are retired

The further back you go, the more you see this. I'm one of 11 grandchildren on one side of my family and there is massive variation among us- geography student, adult nurse, long term unemployed due to MH, social worker, policy officer, self employed builder, self employed painter and decorator, bakery assistant, document controller, long term unemployed due to being an unemployable racist twit. Our parents all do or did different jobs too. In my grandparent's generation there is far more uniformity, with people basically doing the jobs that existed in that area- a shedload of farmhands, coal miners, metal workers and shipyard labourers. It's really interesting to see the changes tbh.

I imagine that in not-too-distant history, a lot of skills, tools etc and maybe a small business, were handed down from generations, and that fathers and sons worked together as miners, riveters or whatever. I'd have thought that would be fairly common in manual occupations. Where I work now, we have a labouring team, and I have known 4 or 5 father/son pairs in the 15 years that I have been there. I can see something similar with local solicitors practices, vets, GPs. I used to work for a civil engineering consultancy about 20 years ago. It was started by someone, who's elder child went on to study civl eng in order to take on the business when the father retired. Unfortunatey the older child died before finishing their studies and the younger child was made to stop studying what they were studying and take up civil eng, instead. They were running the company when I worked there. This is an extreme example i know, but I imagine there were/are many family businesses that grew along these lines.