The influence of parents on their childs choice of career

The sour of p bents on their youngsters survival of c atomic number 18er antecedent to the Industrial Revolution, ferment revolved around the sector of agriculture. Most of the economy, at this point in quantify was based on the farms owned and ope telld by the families themselves. Therefore, this required that every of the family, being grandp bents, pargonnts, children and nieces, gather together and realise in the family farm in point for them to surivive. As Mifsud (2004), express in her sermon P arntal check on adolescents in c atomic number 18er cream, jobs were a consider of destiny and children entered the same grapheme of occupation as their p atomic number 18nts or grandp argonnts. til now, any of this changed with the rise of the modernization in Malta, were affable and economic changes took place. One major cause that marked these social and economic changes was technology ( much(prenominal) as the patterned advance in communication), which accordingly , affected every aspect of daily life constancy of the family, work, marri season, leisure and value of fosterage (Olsen Cooper, 2008). One noniceable bias of these changes was preponderantly on work. With this revolution, pack, contingently young the great unwashed, were endowed with the opportunity to ad regard from a great deal and divers(a) calling occupations that became available come outside the family sector. collect to this, unlike traditional societies, work roles became sepa sayd from the basis of inheritance or kinship position and thus young large number were no longstanding constrained to work with the family and to follow their pargonnts footsteps (Mifsud, 2004).Eventually, teaching method developed, in such a way as to complement the needs of the modern societies (Cassar, 2004 p. 33). As a result of this, Maltese children today are obliged to attend rail between the ages of 5 to 16 years old. Therefore, unlike previous years, todays children are face d with the challenge of competing with an other(a)(prenominal)wise students of the same age in set up for them to chance upon the best educational qualifications. This will present opportunities for them to hire the best, honor and satisfying passages from the wide range available. A pct from educational qualifications there are other social contexts that find the decisions of adolescents in what life to choose. These are bingles personality, socioeconomic place, parents and peers, disciplines, and gender (Santrock, 2001). Throughout this assignment I will be commission particularly on the wreak of parents on adolescents prime(a) of career. During this period, apart from peers, the parents are the around influential people in their lives (Berk, 2007 p.345).Despite the fact that children are non expected to continue on their parents footsteps, the influence of parents has survived (Gravina, 2005). This influence is all the way seen from the very high aim of commitme nt that Maltese parents affirm with regards to their children (Abela, 2000 p. 97-8). directly parents are being both directly and indirectly influential in what careers their children affiance. This influence begins at an early age, when parents, just abouttimes indirectly, model a particular behavior and attitudes in relation to their work in front of their children. This influence goes on to the type of schools parents choose for their children, what takeions their children choose to view at a inessential level, and whether or not their children should continue school. Throughout this assignment I will refer to these factors unmatched by one and establish what kinds of influence the parents drive on their children.Parents as role modelsFrom an early age, children ob go to other peoples behavior and in turn try to be like them by imitating them. These people are often referred to as role models. Due to the diverse occupations that exist today, children are confronted with different role models. As Sharf (2002 p.168) argued, Adults are principal(prenominal) role models for children in learning roughly the innovation of work. Key expectant figures that serve the best example to the child in learning astir(predicate) the work life are parents.Children whose parents work, see, hear and observe their parents palaver about the jobs they ware. Due to this, children acquire knowledge, values, perceptions and aspirations in correlation to their parents jobs. Moreover, Trice and Tillapaughs (1991, cited in Sharf, 2002 p.168) put that childrens aspirations to their parents occupations are influenced by their perception of how satisfied their parents are with their own work. In other words, parents influence what career their childrens choose by the way they talk about work at root, their overall enjoyment and pride in their work, and one must not forget also the position and remuneration of their work, which in the long chip off affect the family b erth. According to Berk (2007 p.455), high SES (Socio-Economic Status) parents are more than likely to sanctify their children outstanding information about the world of work and to have connections with people which suffer help the young persons dominate a high-status position. Apart from this, highly educated parents will have higher(prenominal) expectations on their childs future careers. This is confirmed by a workplace carried out by Bezzina (2008) in her dissertation Career Barriers encountered by students in a female indirect school. She found out that those students, whose parents work in sectors that are considered to be of a low status, aspired less passe-partout jobs than those students whose parents work in professional sectors. From my puzzle I accept that children, whose parents are of a legitimate level of education and jobs, push their children to come upon more. My aim, who is now retired, worked at an authorised position in the Dockyard whereas my m other was a housewife. Unlike my father, my mother discontinue school early (at vicarious level). Due to this when I was at secondary level myself, I didnt kind of find support from my mother, in the gumption that when I found homework backbreakingies I had either to wait for my father to come home from his late shifts (because he worked also part-time at that time) or try and solve it myself, which was quite difficult. Because of this my parents began sending me to individual(a) lessons. I also remember that my parents never pushed me to achieve high marks. That I slide down from the exams was quite enough for them. I am not give tongue to that they would not have been satisfied if I came for the first time at class or form nonetheless they never really put the pressure on me to achieve the best of the marks. On the other hand, now I am quite aware of what I lost. When I go to my aunts house, I unceasingly see her pushing and encouraging her children to do not only their home work but also extra work. My aunt is a mathematics teacher herself, and since she is deeply acquainted to what is happening in schools and outside the school, she pushes her children a lot, to achieve a lot. Indeed the marks my cousins obtain are quite surprising. The eldest daughter of my aunt is indeed now at University victorious up the course of engineering. This experience I have described directs us to the next argument I will make when adolescents grasp their parents to have high educational expectations, adolescents are likely to have higher aspirations for themselves. These parents are also more likely to offer tangible financial aid for guide example assistance in school work, and finance which in the long run influence whether the child continue ingesting for a high status position.When talking about parental influence, one has to keep in take care however that there are parents who do not work, or are not satisfied with their work life. Moreover, around fam ilies in Malta live in poverty just because the parents do not earn enough property to support the family. In my first year at university, I did many a(prenominal) another(prenominal) voluntary work with two children who were at that time staying at the YMCA. The family of these children was financial support in a state of poverty and both parents were illiterate. Due to this, these children were not given the opportunity, like other children of their age, by their parents to learn at least the alphabet or the clock. They werent even able to communicate with me clearly in Maltese. I used to ask myself what will happen to them erst they finish secondary school? What kinds of job will they have later on in their life? This kind of situation reduces vocational choices and many adolescents live in poverty do not view they have more than of a choice (Kaplan, 2004 p. 437). Apart from this, there may be some students who are required to start working at an earlier age in direct t o help in the family finances. Due to the lack of educational qualifications they may have, they end up doing jobs which offer a low salary. conger eel and Peterson (1984, cited in Coleman Hendry, 1990), state that it is important to make clear that the influence of parents on career choices will not be desexualised only by the nature of role model but also by the layer of warmth and affection experienced by adolescences in their race with their parents.Parent-child birthAnne Roe (1957) is a person in the field of Career evolution who investigated and gave considerable importance to Parental run on the choices of careers. She argued that the parent-child alliances play an important role in occupation selection (Santrock, 2001 p.442). She requisiteed to show that people in certain occupations have a common background in terms of the way they were raised (Sharf, 2002 p.308). In order to do so, she sort three types of parent-child relationships Concentration on the child, Av oidance of the child and Acceptance of the child. When the relationship is of concentration on the child, the parents encourage dependence and request perfection. When the parents avoid the child they will be either rejecting or in the worst case neglecting him/her. In the relationship where parents accept the child, parents encourage independence and create a tension-free environment (Sharf, 2002 p.318). This warm supportive parent-adolescent tie, permit young people to search ideas and social roles that foster autonomy, predicting high self-reliance, work orientation, academic competence, and favorable vanity (Berk, 2007 p.413). This kind of relationship set asides also emotional support which is very some(prenominal) needed in times (adolescent times which is stressful) like this.These parental attitudes bear about certain types of personalities in the child (Sharf, 2002 p.319) and promote values, such as independence and freedom, which in the long run help in the choice of career. According to Roe, Individuals who have warm and accepting parents are likely to choose careers that include work with people By contrast individuals who have rejecting or neglectful parents are more likely to choose careers that do not require a good personality or strong social skills (Santrock, 2001 p.442). Anne Roes theory has been criticized a lot. Despite this, Sharf, (2002, cited in Gravina, 2005) banks that Roes theory of parent-child relationship provide interesting perspectives of parental influence on the career choice of children. In addition to this, he also states the importance of the child-parent attachment theories when discussing parental influences. alliance theoryAccording to Berk (2007, p.196) attachment is the strong affectionate tie we have with special people in our lives that leads us to feel pleasure when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress. traditionally attachment was the foundation of the infant-mother r elationship. However, contemporary theorists like Bluestein (1995) indicated the importance of continuous and determine relationships between parent and child till late adolescence, when career geographic expedition is a major activity (Sharf, 2002 p.325). This is supported by many researches which show the importance of parents to respond sensitively to their children in order to promote higher motivations in schools and split up decisions with regards to careers (Berk, 2007). In having a secure attachment with their parents, adolescents separate themselves more with their parents and by doing so they will involve their parents more in decisions and choices. They are also more likely to listen to their parents opinions. In other words, in these well-functioning families, teenagers remain attached to parents and set about their advice, but they do so in a context of greater freedom (Berk, 2007 p.414).Choice of childs educationIt is not only when adolescents are to choose their careers that their parents directly intervene. Parental influence begins from an early age, when parents deicide which schools their children should attend to. In a study conducted by Zammit (1984, cited in Mifsud, 2004) parents were asked what job they would like their son or daughter to take, and most of them stated that they would like their children to do something better then themselves. Unfortunately, sometimes this poses a caper because in doing better than themselves, some parents competency mean doing what they aspired and couldnt achieve at their age in time. For instance the mother who did not get into checkup school and the father who did not make it as a professional athlete may pressure their youth to achieve a career status beyond the youths talents (Santrock, 2001 p.442). As a result of this, parents, even if they bevel square afford it, send their child to a private school because they have the mentality that by doing so their children would obtain more. Such pa rents take hold of the private schools as better than others (Cassar, 2004 p. 43). Some people may also opt to send their children to private lessons for extra work. I am not saying that this is completely wrong but as David Elkind (1981, Cited in Santrock, 2001 p.441) argues todays parents are pressuring their adolescents to achieve too much, too soon. The education of the children is becoming more and more interdependent upon what parents want their children to achieve rather than on the childrens abilities and efforts (Cassar, 2004 p.42). This influence of parents in their children education might have both advantages and disadvantages. One advantage might be for instance that it pressures children positively. This pressure encourages students to do well and at the end of the day achieve high status occupation. On the other hand, many children view this pressure negatively and instead of succeeding, they fail in achieving high status positions. However, all of this depends also on the kind of relationships parents have with their children. nowithstanding all these revelations, it cannot be said that all parents in Malta seek to assist in their offsprings future (Cassar, 2004 p,45).Optional subjectsThe influence of parents on adolescence career choice continues from the choice of school to the choice of subjects that they are expected to choose at the secondary level. Many parents are quite aware that these choices will mostly determine what career their children might pursue in the future. As Sultana (1992) said, once these choices are made, it is impossible to turn back and start again on a different path. At the time when adolescents are to choose their ex gratia subjects, they are at the phase of development. Part of this development involves striving for autonomy- a sense of oneself as a separate, self governing individual. Teenagers strive to deposit more on themselves and less on parents for decision making (Berk, 2007 p.413). I remember when I w as going to choose the subjects at from two and I wanted to choose Art as one of my options. My parents at first couldnt accept the fact that I was going to choose art. Their main rival was that it is difficult to find a job that requires skills in Art. At that time I wasnt kind of looking at the future since I was more interested in what I liked. My mother wanted me to choose information processing system studies, the reason being that it opens a lot of career paths. One can imagine how much we fought on this. At the end of the day my parents accepted, and I chose art. Nowadays when I look back I wish that I listened to what my parents told me and involved them more in the decision making process, because ultimately I couldnt continue on art. Despite this, Bezzina (2002, cited in Cassar and Cutajar, 2004 p.45) found that students main bloodline of help in subject choice was the parents. I forecast that at times parents influence is vital and many adolescents today are to some e xtant seeking their parents more for advice. As already stated, this also depends on what kind of relationship the child has with his/her parents.Further educationParents who influence their children from a young age continue to influence their children later on in life when they finish secondary school and are faced with a major life decision the choice of a sui put off work position. Due to this, adolescents have to choose whether to continue studying or not. rattling recently I was talking to my mother and she explained to me that when she was an adolescent, many of her friends were expected by their parents to begin working once they finish secondary school, in order to help with the family finances. Today this situation changed and now parents are giving more value to education (we have to keep in mind however those low SES families). With this competition taking place at schools and with the new careers that are becoming available (such as careers in relation to information t echnology), many parents expect their children to continue on with their education. Here we see that parents continue to influence their childs decision on career even till post secondary level. In a research conducted by Bezzina (2001, cited in Cassar and Cutajar, 2004 p.45) parents perceive that their influence is important, and they make it a point to exert their influence in one way or another. In some cases this influence is beneficial to the child, particularly if the relationship between the parent and the child is a good one. The parents might provide adequate guidance such as to consider other options for example to attend Junior Lyceum instead of ITS in order to obtain more educational qualifications and have more possible paths to follow. However parents who influence the child in a demanding way will be interfering with the childs decisions.MethodologyA particular hypothesis that I naturalized from the literary works review and my experience about parental influence is that, parents, today, influence their children in career choice. Since I am a curious person, I wished to determine whether such hypothesis is true in practice and in general. In order to do so, I carried out a study amongst adolescences who are now attending post-secondary school. The method I utilized for this study was quantitative and my main instrument was a stopping point-ended disbeliefnaire.The questionnaire is made up of 14 questions. In the first part of the questionnaire, participants were asked general questions about their age, career choice, and school sector and about private lessons. Following these, the questions become more personal. The students had to dissolving agent questions such as parents school level and current occupation, rate their parents satisfaction with their job and how they perceive themselves to be happy in their career and to rate their relationship with their parents. In the last part of the questionnaire participants were asked to list th ose persons or factors that influenced them the most in the choice of optional subjects and career. My main intention in doing these questions was to look for whether a co-relation between these factors (such as parents satisfaction with current job and how participants mobilize they are going to feel with their job) exists which determines, in the long run, whether or not parents influence their children in their choice of career.I distributed these questionnaires to ten students by which I could gather a exquisite representative data. The age of the students varied from 16- 17 years of age. A reason why I chose this age radical is that by this time, they would have already chosen whether to continue studying or not and thus are more aware of what career they want to pursue. Although I did not take a large sample, the results from these questionnaires helped me a lot. By doing this study, I will now be able to prove whether the arguments, literature and experiences described in the assignment are true.Results and DiscussionIn this part of the assignment, I am going to examine the sections that I tackled earlier on in the assignment with the results I found from the questionnaires. I will be linking some of these sections together, in order to make sense of the results I obtained.Influence of ParentsDuring this period, apartfrom peers, the parents are the most influential people in their lives (Berk, 2007 p.345). Although in many cases peers are of great influence, what I particularly found from this study is that when it comes to choice of subject and career, adolescents are more influenced by their parents. Following parents, in my results, the school is shown to be the next influential sector of adolescents when making a choice. twain friends and others (a term which I referred to in my questionnaire and which participants identified them as being teachers and siblings), are shown to influence adolescents particularly on equal level. This support an arg ument I made in the assignment that Despite the fact that children are not expected to continue on their parents footsteps, the influence of parents has survived (Gravina, 2005).Parents as role modelsNo. of ParticipantChoice of CareerOccupationLevel of Satisfaction amazeFatherParents1 architectureSecretaryArchitecture72EngineerTeacherEngineer73Lawyer woman of the houseLawyer64ManagerHousewifeManager85 accountantHousewifeAccountant76 desexualizeNurseAccountant97AccountantHousewifeAccountant78PsychologistTeacherPsychologist89Accountantshop clerkAccountant810TeacherTeacherTeacher9Results of questions 2, 9, 10, 11 12This study illustrates first of all the variance of careers between both genders. One noticeable result shown in the above table is that the majority of the mothers occupations revolve around caring profession housewife, nursing and teaching. Although I didnt make reference of gender in my assignment I believe that this is of great influence on children in their career choic e. I believe that those adolescents, particularly females, whose mothers work in professions not considered to be feminine, will serve as a role model for their children in choosing careers which might seems unachievable due to the gender stereotypes.In my assignment I argued that children today are not expected to continue on their parents footsteps. However, from the data that I poised I observed that every participants choice of career is somehow cerebrate to at least one of the parents occupation. Participants number 1, 3, 5, and 7 chose a career exactly like the father. However, only one of the participants, participant number 10 chose a career like the mother. The other participants 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9 chose a career that has, at least to some extent, some characteristics found in their parents occupation. For instance participant number 8 opted to become a psychologist. Her parents are both teachers. Both professions are considered to be caring professions.From the ratings of parents satisfactions and the participants perceived level of satisfaction of their future job, I observed that those participants that rated their parents satisfaction lower than how they perceive their satisfaction to be with their future career, have mothers who are unemployed and work as housewives. Despite this, all participants expect for participant number 4, rate their level of satisfaction as equal as or better than those of their parents. In my opinion this strengthen the findings made by Trice and Tillapaughs (1991, cited in Sharf, 2002 p.168) that childrens aspirations to their parents occupations are influenced by their perception of how satisfied their parents are with their own work.Parent-child relationshipNo. of ParticipantChoice of CareerClose with Parents1Architecture72Engineer83Lawyer74Manager95Accountant76Doctor97Accountant108Psychologist89Accountant810Teacher8Results of question 13In this study, I tried to determine whether parent-child relationship affects wha t the adolescents opt for a career. Anne Roe, as stated earlier wanted to show that people in certain occupations have a common background in terms of the way they were raised (Sharf, 2002 p.308). She focused on Concentration on the child, Avoidance of the child and Acceptance of the child. In order to identify whether such parental behavior towards the child affects what the child chose as career, would have been difficult, because it is not ethically right to go on about and ask strangers what type of relationship they have with their parents. As an alternative to this I asked the participants to rate how reason out they feel with their parents. The result show that all of the participants feel somehow close to their parents. Since the study is on a small scale, I will take one particular occupation that is somehow common in the study Accountant. What I found from the results is that participants who chose Accounts as a career, rate their relationship with their parents different ly. In addition to this, when one study in depth such an approach, one have to take into consideration also the child-parent attachment.Parents level of educationI wanted to study this issue particularly because I believe from my experience that children, whose parents are of a certain level of education and jobs, push their children to achieve more.No. of ParticipantChoice of CareerLevel of Education find1ArchitectureSecondary2EngineerTertiary3LawyerPost-secondary4ManagerPost-secondary5AccountantSecondary6DoctorTertiary7AccountantPost-secondary8PsychologistTertiary9AccountantPost-secondary10TeacherPost-secondaryWhat I found interesting in this study is that actually, some fathers and mothers have similar education level. It is very difficult to determine a conclusion of whether parents level of education influence career choice or not, since the research is based on a small scale number. However, what I could identify is that none of the participants parents have low educational le vel such as primary level, thus I think that by and large all of the participants were encouraged to continue studying and pursue a professional career.ConclusionIt seems from the small scale study I carried out, the theories I described and the arguments I raised throughout this assignment, that parents are lock away influential. Many students seek help from their parents when they are to choose something important as this of career. Unfortunately, sometimes not all parents are knowledgeable enough to give their children the best information they need with regards to the choice of career. Due to this I believe that students must seek either a guidance teacher or a counselor. They must seek for this guidance from the very beginning, when they are to choose their optional subjects. Still, I believe that the majority of the students do not seek for this help. Some students might be shy to go to a guidance teacher or counselor some students might be reject by parents to do so and oth er view the time with these people such as guidance teacher and counselor as a loss of time. Due to this, students must be aware of the importance of the assistance these people may give them. An effective way in service them become aware of this is throughout the PSD lesson by the PSD teacher.Appendix