To think we have failed our children/daughter as she now doesn’t want any other job just one in my office or working with DH.

[ForJadeEagle]

Our daughter doesn’t want to go to her firm choice anymore. Instead, she wants to take a gap year and reapply to university, but she doesn’t want to get a job unless it’s at my workplace.

Our daughter did incredibly well in her Alevels 4 A stars. She worked incredibly hard for those grades and had been set to go to Durham to study Law. Cambridge was always her ultimate university, but she never applied due to the applications having to be in so early for Oxford and Cambridge compared to the other unis. Now that she has achieved these grades, she wants to take a gap year and apply.

I’ve told her that she cannot simply spend the year working for me. I want her to get some proper, real-world work experience. Almost all of her work experience so far has been with family members or friends of my husband. She’s never had a customer service job or anything similar.

I’m a solicitor and run my own business. My office is in the town centre of our town. It’s not a huge law firm or a Magic Circle firm I have fewer than 20 solicitors working for me. I have allowed her to “work for me” for a while now, and she genuinely enjoys it. In some ways, she’s practically a paralegal. She has been working alongside and shadowing the paralegals for around two years and does a lot of the filing and general office work.

But I would really like her to have a normal job for an 18 year old. Go and work in a supermarket, a café, retail anything like that. Even if she only did it for six months, I think she needs to experience what that kind of work is actually like.

I think we’ve given her far too much privilege, and now we’re seeing the consequences of that. She says that if I won’t let her work in my office for the year, then her dad will let her work with him. He’s an art dealer and runs auctions in London. It’s not Christie’s or Sothebys nothing like that it’s his own business.

The truth is, I feel like we’ve raised a brat, and I’m incredibly disappointed in myself.
She has never really had to work for anything. I pay her for the work she does at my office, and I even pay her above minimum wage for her age. When it came to her car, I told her she needed to save up for one herself. Instead, she went behind our backs and spoke to my husband’s parents, who then “gifted” her a relatively new Mini under ten years old for her 18th birthday.
I’m just so frustrated. Every time we’ve tried to put a boundary in place, she seems to find a way around it. My parents and my husband’s parents are all in their 80s. They don’t always know what goes on, and they would do absolutely anything for her. I’ve tried talking to my parents about it, but they just say, “She’s young.” My parents have more money than sense at this point. They’re retired and financially comfortable, so they feel they have nothing to lose by giving her things.

And it isn’t just our daughter. Our eldest son is at Edinburgh and is going into his final year. He’s doing very well academically and has had plenty of jobs, but they’ve all been “nice” jobs. I worry that we’ve sheltered both of them too much. I don’t want my children to suffer, but I do think there is value in being 18 or 21 and having to do a job that isn’t particularly glamorous.

Our son is 21 and has mostly worked in places like art galleries. He’s currently doing his internship in London at JPMorgan and his plan is to work there after graduation next summer. If that happens, he may never actually have had what I would consider a “normal” job for someone his age.

I never wanted my children to struggle unnecessarily. I wanted to give them opportunities and make sure they were comfortable. But now I’m wondering whether, in trying so hard to protect them from hardship, we’ve also protected them from learning what hard work, independence and consequences actually feel like.

Have we genuinely failed as parents. DH is much more blasé about it. Doesn’t think they need to work in a supermarket or just a customer service role to know what it is like to work for things.

If you are involved in your firm's recruitment process you should know that the LPC has been virtually phased out and replaced by the SQE.

The other thing is, the Cambridge application would be due in mid-Oct and interviews are in late Nov / Dec. So she only has about 7 weeks for the PS.

Never mind this working in a shop business. What does she have for the PS? What is she reading? What has she done over and above the A-level curriculum? This is what Cambridge will be looking for. If she hasn't already, she needs to go online and look for essay competitions for Law - even if she doesn't win anything. the effort involved in entering gives her a kind of 'specialist' interest to develop in the PS. Did she do an EPQ she could talk about? She shouldn't just talk about A-level texts or what she did at school. The tone of an Oxbridge PS needs to be very academic and she should only mention work experience or extra-curricular things if these are relevant to her academic development - eg,'working in a law firm has given me first hand insight into ..,, (insert whatever) and inspired me to research .... x,y,z. My entry for the John Locke Essay Competition develops this theme further .., yadda yadda..," Cambridge are not looking for a list of who has worked where - they have to draw out themes relevant to their choice of study (if possible). Good luck to her anyway.

Accurate and factual?

Plenty of information on the Oxbridge websites about how they use contextual data in admissions - https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/after/contextual-data

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying/guide-for-applicants/decisions/contextual-information

Maybe have a read and stop perpetuating this idea that you can somehow buy your way in. It's just not the case.

Yup. People skills are going to be more in demand than ever before. AI can do the boring stuff. But dealing with people? That’s a skill you cannot replicate or half arse.

I get how you feel (and I would feel similarly)... however, as others said, it's also a little late to get hospitality or retail jobs with no experience at their age. Mine have but they started at 15.... most of them want either lots of experience when they are paying the full £12.50 per hour or they take on 15/16 year olds as they can pay them £8 instead. And even so, with many years' experience under their belt, they still have experienced rejections. For one of the local pubs they had swathes of teenagers going for one job. It's quite a tough market out there.

So you disagree with me? Fair enough. But that still doesn’t mean I am contradicting myself, does it?

Don't you? How odd. I would have thought it's obvious that any challenge builds resilience, whatever the domain. Letting children struggle sometimes is essential to help them build competence, confidence and a sense of agency. It's a balance between helping children grow and learn without becoming overwhelmed. But over protecting children does them no favours. IME, people with privileges often really struggle when life gets hard and every life has hard times.

You make a good point about not all jobs being shit no matter what they are. But my point is that doing a job which isn't your dream job, with all that entails, is helpful in development. OP is right to be concerned.

It was shorthand. I wondered if someone might stump this up as a gotcha but thought ‘no that would be petty’, but here we are.

That’s always the case on MN when someone has absolutely no comeback. They will focus on a spelling mistake etc. rather than actually make a valid point to move the discussion on.

I completely agree with you. And fair enough when this happens with the mega-rich where their children will never have to worry, but I see so many solidly middle class parents treating their children like this. They’re not going to be able to carry their children forever-what’s going to happen when that child can’t keep a job?

DS didn't know what he wanted to do at 18, so we paid for a short professional course, and he was offered a job by the first place he dropped his CV because the team leader had tutored that course. But he kept the job until he did go to university by being focused, turning up daily at 6:45, and learning new skills throughout the two years he worked there. It wasn't the easiest place to work: high pressure and not always congenial colleagues, but definitely a formative experience.

That poster was writing complete baloney! They don’t want the cleverest person in the room? Hell no, they want nice people…

It is a contradiction to suggest that because you work in HE, this makes you very knowledgeable about how coming from an advantaged background makes it spectacularly easy to get into Oxbridge.... if it's so easy, it therefore must mean that such knowledge would have totally bypassed the Oxbridge admissions tutors.

It's not a matter of opinion that I disagree with. It's that what you say makes zero sense and simply isn't true. There's extensive information available about how Oxbridge admissions look at candidates contextually.

But this is derailing the thread.

Of course you can’t buy your way into Oxbridge(!) https://cherwell.org/2025/05/18/over-10-percent-of-oxford-offers-come-from-just-14-schools/

I have a friend who worked for his dad from age 15. Good salary, low hours, the business was all set up for him, didn’t have to hustle and do client acquisition from scratch. I used to be working hard all week (I wfh) and see him regularly come home early, go for bike rides, work three day weeks a lot. He’s now in his late forties. The company folded last year. He’s absolutely stressed out of his mind and miserable. He’s had to take a job as a long distance truck driver. Hardly sees his kids, has to sleep away from home most the week. Health is not good due to sedentary lifestyle as a driver. He repeatedly says he wishes he’d forged his own path than rely on the family business. He feels unable to cope outside the family business set up.

Sounds like she's going to do well in life. I'd let her crack on with her plan

I don't think it obvious at all that because someone has faced challenges in life that they are more resilient. Some life challenges can actually make people less resilient. Also, it may be the case the OP's dd only ever does professional jobs. They are obviously very bright and have connections.

But those children are exceedingly clever- way beyond the average school child in the UK Those schools are academically selective so would expect 99% to be Oxbridge worthy. Even if those children were in the state sector they would be exactly the same academically and have got the same grades. Those pupils would have all the confidence, tutoring and stack of extra curriculars regardless- the school would have no influence on their ‘cultural Capital. I would imagine even more of them would have got into Oxbridge as there wouldn't have been a private school context to take into account.

Not being funny, my daughter has worked throughout uni in hospitality and it's relentless. She'd give anything to have an opportunity like your daughter's. Having that on her CV is possibly the biggest gift you can give her.

No. They’re not more clever. Their parents just have the money to provide the education, support and time needed to succeed when applying to Oxbridge.

I don't think you've failed. I do think it's normal as they get to these ages and we see both our strengths and flaws in our kids that we start worry how we messed up our kids. I know I've had those moments, even though my day job involves working with some of the most anti-social - and failed - people.

For most of history, working for family members has been the norm for young people and as others said, most young people aren't getting those 'normal' jobs these days. IME, young people are more likely to be pointed towards agency work than supermarkets and cafes, and even that is hit and miss. My DD1 did that during her gap year, and ended up working as a school receptionist (her interest is education).

The kinds of changes you're talking about will need baby steps connected to her current ideas. I'm not certain what area of law you're in from your posts, but there are areas of law that involve working with a lot of people from most backgrounds. Some courthouses have paid internship programmes usually to temporarily bulk up numbers on the admin side for 10-12 weeks at a time, and if you're in England, look up Brook Street, they're an agency the court system uses, and it's very normal where I am for young adults to work in court roles as agency staff due to their interest in law and wanting that kind of practical, personal experience - quite a few move on law careers, some stick around for various reasons. Another option is looking at the Crown Prosecution Service, who are currently running a campaign for admin staff, and see if they appeals to her. Framing these as getting broader experience that would work great on her application as a nudge is probably better than trying to frame it entirely altruistically.

The main way to teach things like volunteering matters (which it very much does, our entire society relies on it) is to demonstrate it and again, potentially show it's connection to her goals. One option is volunteering with the Witness Services at a court - this varies by place and has some changes lately, it's usually Victim Support, Citizen Advice Bureau, I believe London has it's own service responsible. I do know people who've started there because of their interests and moved onto related careers. I've also known parent-adult child who volunteer in the same area for Witness Services...

Maybe OP has kept her maiden name so it’s different to her children. It’s hardly unusual.

Of course. The key point is that working for a parent's business in a sector related to your preferred undergraduate subject has positives and negatives so you would need to think how to respond in case it did come up at interview.

Your children have worked hard and done well for themselves. They're not relying on handouts, and by your own admission your daughter is thriving in her role in your office. So I don't understand why you're so keen for them to take low-paid jobs that don't match their qualifications or ambitions.

You are talking about someone without qualifications and probably few skills though. OP's dd isn't in that situation.