Regardless of her age, chances are your child has been touched by today’s uncertain job market. You may have lost a job in a corporate restructuring, dramatically lowering the family’s living standard when the next job didn’t pay as well. Your spouse might have survived a layoff, but may complain constantly at the dinner table about mounting pressures at the office as he tries to cover all the work. A young child may see her executive mother and feel pressure to follow that path. Adolescent children of fast-track Baby Boomers have been told by the media they may be the first modern American generation to not do better than their parents.
As a working parent, you could be a strong ally in helping your children negotiate the corporate jungle, but you also could do more harm than good.
“So many adults have come to me and said they’ve been following somebody else’s dream,” says Theresa E. Kane, director of the Academy of Professional Skills Development, a career planning consulting firm in Lancaster, Mass., and author of “Career Coaching Your Kids: Guiding Your Child Through the Process of Career Discovery” (Davies-Black, $16.95).
Kane and co-authors David H. Montross and Robert J. Ginn Jr. wrote this new guide because, as career counselors, they often must undo parental mistakes that set their now-adult clients on misguided career paths.
“Too many kids are forced into doing something they don’t want to do,” says James M. Boros, managing director of Interim Career Consulting in Westchester, an outplacement firm.
Often, Boros works with clients who didn’t fit a particular corporate culture because their hearts were elsewhere, almost as if a giant “I’d rather be sailing” bumper sticker was stuck to their foreheads.
Of course, not every parent pushes her child in the wrong direction. And being a good career coach doesn’t necessarily mean being a top executive able to get a child informational interviews with other top executives.
Marietta Sorensen, now a Chicago secretary, worked as a medical technician when her children were growing. Often, she would have to take her young daughter on weekend assignments. Today, Sorensen’s daughter, Patricia Muscia, is a pediatric special-care nurse with a college degree.
After Muscia graduated from Loyola University, she caught up with her mother and handed over her diploma.
“She hugged me and said, `This is yours. You always told me I could do anything,’ ” Sorensen recalls. “I remember standing there in tears.”
To parents of teenagers, such moments may seem filled with all the realism of a greeting card commercial. More typically, teenagers moan in pain when parents nag about what they’re going to do with their lives.
And while parents may be well-intentioned, they should think twice about pushing children, as the consequence of bad career choices can be serious. Annual tuition costs at four-year private colleges now eat up nearly 40 percent of median family income, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And there are human costs, says Susan Mackey, a clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Mackey counsels kids so pressured by upscale parents to succeed that they have attempted suicide or taken drugs.
“Kids today are a lot more aware of how scary the job market is,” she says.
So how do you help kids negotiate a changing job market and find a career path they love without turning them off?
First, writes Kane, separate your own dreams from what your child really wants.
And don’t discourage any job aspirations, the author notes, including garbage collection (many a toddler’s favorite). Instead of telling a budding actress about the long odds of success, ask her to think about why she’s chosen that field, and how she will earn a living while waiting for that big break.
As your child goes through the early- to middle-school years, the authors suggest you assign chores but don’t let them become rigid demands. Remain supportive in the early teen years as they get their first jobs, but begin to stress responsibility for getting their own work done. By young adulthood, help your child seek out role models in careers of interest to him or her.
Above all, experts agree, make yourself happy in what you do, because your attitude about work–positive or negative–will rub off on your children.
“Confucius said to find a job you love and you’ll never have to work another day in your life,” Boros says. “I’d like to get just half the adults who come in this door to think like that.”
