|
The Role of Parents in
Career Development
There has been a great deal of research on
various aspects of career development and the
factors that influence this decision. A majority
of these findings place a great emphasis on
family and parents. Research has also proven
that factors like socioeconomic status, parents’
education, their success in their workplace, and
the cultural background are linked to the career
choices that a child makes. It has also been
established that secure and fulfilling close
relationships lay the basis for an inclination
towards career development as they provide a
sense of security that is conducive to risk
taking and exploration.
Parents Style - an Influence
Parenting styles refer to the practices
adopted for child rearing, values, and
behaviours. There are four types of such styles,
viz. Indulgent, Authoritarian, Authoritative,
and Uninvolved. Of these, the authoritative
style is the most balanced in terms of
expectations, emotional support, and
recognition. It is found to be associated with
self-confidence, persistence, social competence,
academic success, and psychosocial development.
The children of such parents enjoy independence,
a warm and loving family structure, which in
turn makes them more inclined towards exploring
challenging careers. The only drawback of this
structure is that very high expectations could
prove to be detrimental at times.
Influence of Family
In families where the children are provided
with support, guidance, and interaction in the
decision making process, the chances of career
development are high. In fact, this is
considered to be more important than the
structure and status of the family and its
absence can lead to "floundering," the inability
to develop and pursue a specific career focus.
Interactions between parents and children and
among siblings are a powerful influence.
Interactions can include positive behaviors such
as showing support and interest and
communicating openly, or negative behaviors such
as pushing and controlling. Siblings can be a
source of challenge and competition and a basis
for comparison of abilities, thus providing a
context for identity formation.
The attributes of an involved family are
cohesiveness, growth, sociability, democaratic
decision making, scope for individual
development, and emotional involvement.
The Result
This discussion has zeroed on the following
findings, viz. parenting behavior and family
functioning have a sizeable impact on career
development. The following suggestions have been
made by Hall et al. (1996); Way and Rossmann
(1996) to career counsellors and academicians.
 |
Shift the focus
from the individual to the family
system. |
|
|
Achieve a greater
degree of parental involvement in
schools. |
|
|
Help families
become more proactive and involved.
|
|
|
Consider ways of
duplicating helpful types of family
functioning in schools, especially for
children whose families are not
proactive. |
This might be taxing and
demanding to the parents but the results are
worth the effort. Parents could also support
learning strategies towards promoting career
readiness, such as encouraging children to take
challenging classes, providing opportunities to
instill confidence and expectations that family
members will do their best in difficult
situations, and making informal contacts for
exploration of occupational choices. Children
are very good at duplicating the behavior
patterns of adults and their opinions and ideas
are also formed on this basis. But this is an
ongoing process and hence has to be religiously
followed.
And lastly, there is no customized or ideal way
to achieve these goals. Each parent will have to
evolve their own suitable plan of getting things
done.
|
