In America, many parents advise their children to focus on a career by a certain age (12ish), and some kids respond well to that advice. If I had to guess, the major predictor of a man's eventual career choice is what his father did.
But other boys rebel.
With women, the path may be less direct, if only because most girls have not grown up with career women as Moms And most women's lives become infinitely more complicated simply by birthing children, which alters everything.
I'm not really sure about Dads' influence on girls' choices, or Moms' on boys'.
But then again, I am old. It is hard to remember that the world I grew up and into has crumbled, shattered and split up into a world where only a handful of men and women my age still hold positions of influence.
And they need to retire IMHO.
Now the main role models for kids are those in their 30s, 40s and 50s, parents or not.
By contrast, I am part of the collection of those old curiosities -- grandparents -- whom children can't really make sense of. We tell them jokes.
But oddly I also am the Dad of three young adults still in their 20s. None of them is even remotely interested in my career -- journalism -- and I congratulate them for that.
Somewhere along the line, raising children the best as I could, I may have mentioned art as a career. I'm not sure why I would have done that and I'm quite sure no one listened. Art is not really a career; it is about dreaming, imagining something else than this -- what we are stuck with.
It's about risks and being outside, looking in, even if there is no "inside," not really.
As I aged, I purposely stopped giving career advice. People deserve to make their choices, free from the influence of their parents.
But they need never stop dreaming.
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The painting above is unnamed. It is by Julia Matthiessen Weir and will appear in an art gallery in San Francisco soon.
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