The advice you give your children about their career can have unexpected and unintended consequences years later.
I’ve heard a lot of well meaning, but terrible career advice given over the years. It started when I was getting towards the end of high school, and I’ve heard plenty more in the 15 years since then. I wanted to be a teacher when I was in high school, but when I told my parents I was given the response by my mother of “that’s not a man’s job” – looking back it’s probably the most absurd statement I’ve ever heard. She no doubt wanted me to be like my father, with a relatively large, stable income working in insurance or something similar. So, being the impressionable kid I was, I put being a teacher out of my mind and instead wasted my time in a variety of jobs over the next 15 years. I got two degrees and served in the military (which was actually pretty damn great), but you know what? I always seemed to find myself teaching someone something. I was a swimming teacher for a few years while at university. I taught new students at jujutsu and judo (which I did for the better part of 12 years), I ended up an instructor while I was in the army. In a way I’ve also been teaching people the last couple of years whilst blogging about success and publishing my book, Stepping Out.
Teaching in Australia pays damn good money. Graduate salary is good, and the highest pay for a non-executive teacher is up around the 100k mark. I don’t know if I was told teaching wasn’t a man’s job because it didn’t pay as much as high up on the corporate ladder, or because of some stupid, outdated notion of gender roles. What I do know is that it’s a damn good job, with good pay and conditions that would have had me in a happy, fulfilling career because it was what I wanted to do. Instead I spent the next decade drifting around and not really getting anywhere. Parents don’t seem to realise just how damaging some of the advice they give can be, and the lasting effects it can have. If your kid has a purpose in life and you try and steer them away from it, one of two things will most likely happen: they’ll drift around like I did, and find themselves gravitating towards it anyway, or they’ll find themselves doing something they think they should do just for the stable income and will hate going to work most days. Do you want this for your child? When you give them career “advice” and discourage your child from what they want to do, do you actually know anything about the current job market, or are giving them ill informed knowledge or even worse, trying to impose your values onto them?
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We fail our children when we give them career advice most of the time. We tell them when they’re young that they can do anything they set their mind to, but when they express the desire to do a job the parent might think is a bit risky the advice changes to “no, you need to go into finance or engineering”. No wonder so many twentysomethings are so pissed off about life. Not only that, parents give career advice in flippant, one off statements, whilst simultaneously leaving the child to their devices and hoping they’ll work things out themselves. Oh, and of course success is expected. They might be 18 and an adult in the eyes of the law, but really they are kids, and they need your help and guidance. If all you can give them is single sentence statements about their career, then find someone who can actually help them instead. If you go with the default stuff above, you have a recipe for failure, and a shitload of resentment aimed right back at you.
It’s ludicrous when you think about it. An 18 year old has been told what to do every day of their lives by parents, by teachers and by anyone else in authority. Then, we give them a few ridiculously simplistic pieces of career advice and say “there you go, it’s all up to you now”. You expect a person that hasn’t lived in the adult world and made important decisions for themselves to immediately start doing so, and magically come up with the right ones that will give them a decent career. That isn’t just stupid, it’s dereliction of your duty as a parent because unless I’m mistaken, parenting doesn’t stop when your kid turns 18.
Here’s some advice – if your child expresses interest in something that you think is risky or doesn’t align with your values, don’t immediately blurt out that there are no job prospects. First of all, it’s likely you don’t know what you’re talking about anyway. Don’t express disapproval, ask them to actually tell you about it. Gain an idea of why they want to do it and if they have a plan. This is your job as a parent, not to judge and dismiss your child but to actually help them. If they want to do something, help them find a way to do it or if it really isn’t feasible, help them find something similar. Help them get their foot in the door, talk to everyone you know and find out if they know someone doing that job. Help your child map out a plan to get them to where they want to be. Give them every chance of success instead of writing off their choice and expecting them to do what you want them to do. The world has enough lawyers, stockbrokers and depressed people that work in offices. The world could do with more people that are actually happy going to work, so help your child be one of them.
Photo: michelhrv/flicr