AIBU to try to steer my DS into a well paid career against his dreams

[Putneydad7]

My wife and I both came from humble backgrounds but have done well in our careers and earned good money. My DS is very academic, great A levels, just started his second year at a good Uni.
We are both pushing him to apply for internships in banks/consultancies/law firms next summer so that his job opportunities will be maximised after Uni.
HOWEVER
He really loves theatre, acting and directing. He wants to spend next summer taking a production to the fringe with some friends, sofa surfing and having a laugh. He also is thinking about theatre directing as a potential career path.

I feel so evil that I am steering him away from that as I know it is a path strewn with poverty and failure, sure some succeed, a few have a great career, but most give it up after 5-10 years and I guess find an alternative career.
His asset is his brain and I'm trying to get him to maximise his income over perhaps his happiness, oh I'm so dilemma'd (I know, made up term).
What do you think, AIBU, should I back off and let him make his own way/mistakes or otherwise?

1. University is pointless if you’re not going to allow growth and change.
2. Theatre/performing arts are a hugely financially valuable sector in the UK.
3. He wants to direct - that means leadership, organising, running a budget, making stuff happen from nothing, marketing etc etc. Infinitely better development than some dull internship.

If you feel evil, perhaps it’s because you are. Maybe reflect on that, and support your ds and acknowledge what makes him happy.

If you can’t piss around trying to get a show to fringe when you’re 20, when can you?

Support him in his theatre ambitions - as long as he focuses on his studies just now and does as well as he can in his degree.

Acting/directing in fringe theatre is a fantastic experience and brilliant learning opportunity which he won't be able to access once he's in the corporate world. If the theatre world turns out not to be for him, he'll have his degree plus excellent transferable skills. Lots of corporates prefer taking on interns or analyst program employees who have a bit of life experience and who have had the confidence to try different things in their early career.

It's his life. Let him live it.

He is going to be working until he's 70 just let him be. Plenty of time to change career paths as he gets older. I'd let him follow his dreams, spend his 20's doing the things he loves. The rest will follow in time. Being pushed into a career that you don't want whilst not living life to the full can feel incredibly dull.

Oh please leave him alone. I have an “arts” degree that people might look on with disgust these days. I pursued my dreams and have loved every minute. Because I’ve given it my all and wanted it, I’ve got myself into a very well paid position.
Stop what you’re doing and let your son live his life. Don’t make him miserable

You need to get back in your lane. You chose your path and your son should choose his. He should live his life for his happiness, not yours.

I’m also from a similar background to you and I haven’t done as well as you and your wife.

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable at all. You are doing your best to pass on all the social, cultural and financial capital that you have accumulated and which had served you well. You are doing what all middle class people would do for their children and that is by guiding him towards something that is entirely within his grasp if he applies himself.

If he’s really passionate about it, he’ll simply disregard your advice and so I would support whatever decision he makes but be ready to swoop in and guide him if he fails and wants to do something more tangible with his life.

Will he not just do what he wants anyway? There isn't a chance in hell I'd have been pushed into anything at that age, particularly by my parents.
Let him live his own life. He's got time to change his mind multiple times if he wants.

Send him to the Fringe! He's not choosing that for a lifetime/career just for a summer ... Youth is for the young, even if it's wasted on them. :)

If he can't explore and grow now, when can he? It's much easier to do these things as a young'un than later when the committments feel set in stone and the financial consequences are harsh.

There are contacts to be made everywhere and 'non academic' experiences teach life skills and make a CV pop.

(and for your conventional heart: nothing makes work-a-day life pop like scrounging on a couch; I'll bet part of why you value your comfortable position is that you skivvied long and hard - as I did, so I know that those few chances at 'frivolity' are great memories.)

Your DS is young enough to try for the career he wants, learn lots, and then (if he chooses) transfer into a different sphere in his mid twenties.
Small example: I know a barrister, now successful, who started off as an actor.
So much can happen and change in your twenties.
As long as his academics are good and he works hard, let your DS follow his heart.

Its his life, and ultimately he will be the one to live the consequences of his actions, not you. He is old enough to understand his choices, please let him make them. Otherwise the impact could be driving a wedge between you and him, he could feel 'my mum thinks I'm not good enough' which would be more harmful than missing an internship - although I'm not convinced that is harmful at all. He will remember doing the fringe for ever. Early 20's is the time to make memories, travel, explore etc. He has 45 years of work ahead of him, there is no rush.

Just stop it. He needs to follow his dream, not yours.

What are his genuine earning potentials? He probably won't become the next Leonardo DiCaprio but does this industry pay decently at all for the jobs he wants to do?

It’s not up to you- he’s an adult now and these are his choices. I went to drama school after Uni and after a couple of years doing rubbish jobs and auditions realised it wasn’t for me. Have now been teaching, very happily, for 30 years - acting skills v useful an and no regrets.

I think as long as he has a plan that’s good. He knows what he’s doing in the summer and has ambitions to be a theatre director.

Im not sure there’s much use pushing other jobs. Just encourage to get a good result in his degree (not doing so much theatre that he neglects his work).

With AI and other technological changes no one can be sure what will be the "big money" careers any more anyway.

I knew so many dead behind the eyes people who felt they had to rush to make as much money as possible.

My parents pushed me towards a more academic path then I wanted to take (I wanted to be a beauty therapist but apparently that was a “waste of a grammar school education”). I’m hugely resentful about this, as the career they were so proud to see me in also pushed me towards a mental breakdown due to stress. I vowed that whatever my dc wanted to do, I would support them 100%, whatever I felt towards it. Their life, not mine.
my “mid-life crisis” aged 40 was meaning saying fuck you and your opinions, I’m gonna do something just for me that makes me happy, which I did and I’m now in a job that requires zero qualifications but I absolutely love and I’m so much happier. It was still a battle at my age with my parents still constant negativity towards it, I almost quit so many times due to their opinions, but I’m so glad I didn’t. And sometimes I wonder how much happier I would’ve been if I’d had the courage to follow my own dreams instead of theirs when I was younger. I will always resent them for it (not that they know it). Please don’t make your ds resent you too

You are right in thinking thay theatre is a route to failure and poverty - not for everyone, but for many. But interfering with your son's dreams will only foster resentment. I know a huge number od people who've moved into professional careers (law, banking, medicine, teaching) after trying failing at something artistic in their 20s. The best thing you can do is encourage him to keep his options open and commit to revisiting or doing an internship in 3 - 5 years if it doesn't work out.

Back off AND stop assuming a career in the arts means failure. From the group I went to the Fringe with one is high up in events for a corporate group, another is Executive Producer on one of the biggest dramas of last year, I'm 20 years into a career in factual TV, someone else runs a theatre... Even if we were all living in tents though we wouldn't trade that incredible experience.
Taking a show up will teach him loads about running a budget, marketing, publicity, networking, resilience and so on though. All incredibly valuable even if he ends up doing something as inspiring as banking.

So you’d rather he spent years earning good money but doing something he doesn’t like? When he has a clear passion for something else?
It’s his life, let him live it the way he wants.

Taking a show to the fringe himself is gong to involve far more leadership and problem solving than the kind of work he might do on as an intern.

Suggest it but leave him to choose. He’s an adult.

YANBU to be worried about his future career path, but YAB a bit deluded if you think that law in this day and age will lead to a naice middle class career. It’s one of the most vulnerable sectors to AI and we certainly won’t see so many training contracts in future (already happening tbh). He might end up paralegalling on MW for an extended period.

I used law as a leg-up to a MC life after a similar background to yours. The same logic does not apply today. Unfortunately the world we know is not the world that our DC will live in.

I’d let him be.

Please back off and let him make his own life choices. You may find once he’s taken a show to fringe theatre is not for him that will be his choice. Be proud whichever career path he chooses.