It’s not a simple question but we treat it as such. What do you want to do with your life? It’s fun when the kids are five, but it takes on a seriousness when our kids become teenagers. There is foreboding.
The question begins to change. It morphs into “Do you want to go to college?” Then it becomes “Have you thought about your ten-year plan?” And finally, the question becomes “What career do you want to go into?” When our kids turn eighteen, that’s the question they get asked.
By guidance counselors, friends and family, and eventually by their parents. And once again it’s not a simple question but we treat it as such. We expect them to come back with an acceptable answer.
“I want to be a doctor.”
“A lawyer.”
“A teacher.”
We are asking kids to name a career and what they come back with is what they have seen on TV. If they like thrillers, the answer of police officer or detective will come up. Sci-fi? An astronaut is going to be in there. And although all of these answers make us parents feel good, we also know that our teenagers are mostly humoring us. We pretend we don’t, but we know. We know because teenagers have no idea what jobs really exist in the world. It’s not their fault. It’s ours as parents.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
When I grow up, I want to be the team lead for a Fortune five hundred company that helps oversee the logistical trade routes between the U.S. and China.
I don’t think any teenager in the history of history has ever given that answer the question. First, it sounds boring as all get out. But second, what teenager would even realize that it’s a possibility? Oh, I’m sure there is someone out there that has that job and loves it. But let’s admit that it’s not a job a teenager would know exists when they aren’t even really sure how health insurance works.
On a recent college tour with my daughter, we came across a book about textiles. I showed it to her, and we talked about what careers went with a book like that. It’s textiles, so there has to be a lot. From designing fabric to…. I have no idea.
“Well, textiles, you know,” I told my daughter.
“Like designing things?” she said.
“I’m sure there is some sort of designing.”
We put the book back and moved on as I was sure that my daughter now wanted a career in textiles, even though I have no idea what that would look like.
But it doesn’t matter, because we all expect our children to know. We expect them to know what team leads are, what project managers do, or a clothing presser. For the record, I have no idea what a clothing presser does, but Google assures me that it is a career in the textile industry.
My point is we need to stop asking our kids what career they want to go into and then expecting them put all their efforts into that career once they reach the age of sixteen.
What we are missing.
It’s time to face the facts as parents, our kids really have no idea what they want to do when they grow up. Experts call this career anxiety, which is fantastic. Teenage anxiety is up 20% since COVID so let’s throw more on that.
But as a society, we don’t let up. We have specialized programs in high school that begin to funnel teenagers into jobs of the future. Or jobs that we think will be the jobs of the future. Respectable jobs that will make our kids super rich so that they can take care of us. It’s this huge push to make sure all of our children are loaded. Oh, we say things like we want them to be productive members of society and be able to support themselves. But that’s as far as it goes. We never actually define what any of that looks like.
Are you a productive member of society if you work in construction as a day laborer? Or are you a more productive member of society if you are a marine biologist in Florida monitoring algae? None of us have any idea. But it doesn’t matter, because we are going to push our kids to decide the next fifty years of their life when they are eighteen years of age. And if they don’t decide? There is low-key shame from every corner of their world. We put that on them.
What never comes up are other important questions. How do you handle work/life balance? What about setting boundaries in a professional environment? Do I have to give two weeks’ notice when I quit because my boss at the fast-food joint says that it’s illegal?
These are just a few of the things that never come up. To borrow a little bit from Pink Floyd, we are just so excited for our children to become another brick in the wall. As parents, we do this because we want our kids to be able to support themselves. We are all very aware of our mortality and it scares us. What will my kids do without me? It’s a lot of pressure to have on our shoulders, and we push that pressure directly onto our kids.
Hardly ever do we ask our kids what they want to do to be happy adults. That seems like a major oversight. We need to do better. We need to stop expecting our teenagers to figure out their life when they have no life experience.
“I don’t know what I want to be,” my daughter said after our college tour. “Everything is so…fuzzy.”
“Don’t worry about it. When you start college, go undecided. Live a little and figure out what you want to be,” I told her.
It’s the best advice I could give her. There is time, at least for now. I want her to dip her toes into the world, figure out how to live in it, and then make a plan to curb it to her liking. The world will get along just fine another brick in the wall.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock