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?

It never goes well trying to force others to do things your way, it will only lead to resentment, let him find his own path. Its not like he'd be alone as a failed actor! There's also plenty of failed, poor and miserable lawyers. Every way has the potential to be great or bad.

You should and honest and frank discussion about careers and earnings

There's someone for every job, my DD is desperate to do law so she will happily take the place of OP's son while he acts 🤣

Raise your concerns with him regards how to earn a living. But let him chose.
I am in exactly the same boat as you. And I am a ball of nerves at present, but it is their life. They get to build it and fight for it. We just make sure they know how hard that path is going to be. If they still want to go ahead, then let them go for it.

Do you know how lucky you are to have a son with a passion and the gumption to do something to make it happen? So many young men these days basically don’t do anything except play video games.

You want your son to get into Banking, Consultancy, or Law?

In an economy which is about to be decimated by the mass roll out of A.I.?

If he follows your guidance, he will be unemployed and broke by the time he's 30.

Of course he won't be. Stop overreacting

I totally get it!
perhaps suggest he auditions for drama school. If he makes it through great! If not, (and probably likely unless he is spectacularly talented) it might give him a sense of the competition and encourage him to lean into other talents.
Going to Edinburgh sounds an amazing experience though!
I would also say all the drama university grads i know have done brilliantly career wise. They are usually not in performing arts but have great people skills that take them far!

If I read the OP rightly this is one summer we are talking about, not the rest of his life.
He has diligently followed the academic route for 13 years and will no doubt continue to do so after this one summer, so where is the problem?
He will meet lots of interesting people, gain life experience, have some fun, broaden his outlook ... all good. He may find it is not what he hoped, or he may love it so much and make some good contacts so he feels that he might pursue it when he has finished his degree. Who knows? But in any event it is just one summer.
One summer in which to have a taster of a different life. Let him have this.

Im asian and once you start looking on social media you cant help but see all of these ex high flyers changing careers into something creative later in life.

You are going to continue to do what you want as you cannot see the damage you will do to your DS. My advice - for him - is to follow his heart and his dreams and tell.you to fuck off.

My cousin has suffered for years with severe depression and anxiety due to the years he spent working in an academic field pushed onto him by his parents. He left the job before his 30th birthday. Had he stayed, I dread to think of what may have happened to him.

Don’t underestimate the damage you could do by trying to force this. Stop telling your son what you want out of his life when he’s the one who has to live it.

You have an old fashioned view of what are secure professions.

I’m a solicitor and the profession is about to go through unprecedented change due to AI. It’ll be smaller, more specialist / niche, and entry level positions will be few and far between. I’d be very surprised if the paralegals and secretaries that current provide us with support are around in 5 years time.

It might see out. In my area of law there may well be a continuing need for humans to provide tactical, strategic advice that AI currently struggles to provide. They might also be areas where people just prefer to deal with a human being. However, the days of there being loads of lawyers, all earning a packet, are numbered.

If you do want to steer him into something lucrative and secure, I suggest you do a lot more research.

As an aside, I instruct a few barristers who are former actors and changed careers.

Do you seriously think you'd rather your child was richer and miserable in preference to poorer but happy? Happiness cannot be bought.

Do you seriously think that an intelligent young person who pursues a creative discipline at 18 wouldn't be capable of subsequently getting some mpre traditional qualifications at age 28 if that turns out to be a good idea?

Do you seriously think that no transferable beneficial skills would be developed during 5-10 years spent pursuing a leadership role within a creative sector?

Back off. Let him have the freedom to pursue his dreams. Nothing will be wasted if he works hard at it, and working hard is a joy when you are doing something you love. If after 5-10 years he decides he's got as far as he's going to and doesn't want to go down that path any more, he can do an MBA and become a charismatic CEO of something using all those skills that the theatre taught him.

He will.

Most people are oblivious as the impact A.I is going to have on the economy. Your average Law Firm is where Blockbuster was about 2012.

As for Consultancy, do you remember phone cards?

And Banking is where your local high street Internet cafe was back in 2010.

These are all dead or dying industries. And no, the current jobs won't evolve, they will simply dissolve.

I follow a few developer forums. What is in the pipeline will quite literally change our society. Remember, the "A.I" that we as consumers are currently interacting with, the "latest version," is about five years old. The "current" stuff in development, is on a different level entirely.

He’s an adult - get your hands off his life. Being a wanker banker isn’t for everyone, and your creative child is almost certainly going to find the whole industry awful. Because it is. There’s a chance he’ll never get to the point of making ‘good’ money anyway before dropping out.

Those industries are going to be decimated by AI anyway. Theatre? Directing? Production? Not so much.

My friend’s family are still furious that she gave up her law career at 28. She hated it. They wanted a lawyer daughter.
Dbro is an architect who quit at 30 and is now in a job he loves.
Another good friend was an accountant at a BIG 4, gave that up in their late 20s hated it… brother of a colleague was on the way to being a tennis champ, massive family sacrifices. Turned round at the airport on the way to the USA for a coveted scholarship he’d won and told parents he hated tennis and wasn’t going. MASSIVE family rift.

They all had ONE thing in common - pushed into careers they didn’t really want by parents and expectation because they were smart or talented or whatever.

OP a few further thoughts from me.

AI is not taking over corporate law, I promise you. It will decimate routine BAU legal work (and we are using it to do so!) so I wouldn't be recommending he try to get into conveyancing for example, but if you want him to have a well paid career you wouldn't be looking at those disciplines anyway.

Why not broker a half way approach with him. He gets on to a grad program in a big firm and does as much of his hobbies as he likes. He's not going to survive long beyond training if he's dropping the team in it at 6pm twice a week to do rehearsals and never available at weekends but so be it. He'll have great work experience and plenty to pay his bills and if he's still keen on theatre after his training (and has had a taste of living real life on a salary - rent, council tax, bills, commuting) and still wants to live on a quarter/third of the salary while pursuing his dream then he'll only be 25 (ISH?) fair play to him.

I actually really enjoyed law at uni, and my training, but in the run up my attitude was always "if I can break into this I can pretty much break into anything I put my mind to* and it's easier to move down than up".

(* Yes, not medicine or astrophysics, we all have our limits, but hopefully you get the point! )

For what it's worth I also really enjoy my killer job. I really don't think there's anything I'd rather do, although I look forward to retirement as a dog walker 😜)

It doesn't even sound like you enjoyed your job in the end, and your wife is still working late most days. Is this really what you want for your son?
There are so many interesting careers at there these days, its seems a shame to push him in to something he doesn't want.
Perhapes him being brought up by nannies and not seeing his Mum until late a night as taught him that his isn't what he wants.

I thought one of the luxuries of being rich was the possibility for your kids to become creatives instead of corporate drones.

Well, yes, exactly! You can give them more freedom than you had, and the confidence to know there’s a cushion if everything goes tits up.

He’s a bloody adult and you shouldn’t be pushing him to do anything.

His career, his interests, his life. Not yours.

I was very academic too - great A-levels, 1st class degree, etc. On paper, I was absolutely someone who could have been applying for placements with top consultancies etc. When I got my degree results, I remember lots of people telling me I should be looking at their graduate placement programmes etc.

However, I would frankly rather have poked my own eyes out with a stick. Thirty years later, I would still rather poke my eyes with a stick than work at (eg) a consulting firm or an investment bank or corporate law.

If it helps - directing and producing a fringe show is an independent project that entails working out budgets, working as a team, being resourceful, planning and logistics, marketing, thinking on your feet, creativity and management, all of which are excellent things to be able to talk about at a job interview. I’ve interviewed job candidates who have done things like this, and without exception, I’ve always found them more impressive and memorable than candidates who did a corporate internship when it comes to the usual interview questions about giving examples of times when they’ve solved a problem, managed conflict, been self-motivated etc.

I think he should do the fringe next summer - it'll be an amazing experience, but will also hopefully help him to see how difficult it is to make a living in the arts.

Some PPs have said how the arts/entertainment sector is a big part of the UK economy - I agree that it is, but only the top 5% or so are making a good living out of it. It's a labour of love/vocation which means people will work for peanuts.

I would definately encourage him to get a more stable job when he graduates. I'd love to have been a set designer, but I strongly doubt that I'd own my own home now if I was.

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