Good parenting plays a key role in a child's career development, writes Jim Bright.
Many readers have written to me on the topic of parents and how they have played a negative role in their children's career development.
This week, I want to write in praise of parents and the very positive role they can and do play in the career development of their children, an influence or role that often extends well into the adulthood of their offspring.
As in so many other areas, parents are potent guides and role models. There is plentiful evidence of the role parents play in career development. For instance, my colleagues and I found that nearly 30 per cent of university and year 12 students reported their parents had influenced their choice of study at university.
We also found that students were more likely to enrol in commerce-related courses if their parents worked in such roles and, similarly, parents working in scientific areas had offspring more likely to choose science degrees.
In earlier childhood, many children express interest in a career in an area broadly similar to their parents' and about half who express such a congruent choice go on to enter those occupations.
I see parents as being guides who literally and figuratively hold their children's hands and walk them to the edge of possibilities. They show children a world where they can make a contribution and thus be a valued member of a community. They help children to appreciate and develop their talents. They encourage and enable their children through empathy, compassion, understanding and modelling application, persistence and self-discipline.
Parents are neither on the field of play nor spectators in their children's careers. Rather, they are on the team bench, supporting and admiring, providing feedback but ultimately allowing their children to play their own game with others, take their own risks, make their own mistakes and be acknowledged for their own achievements. In sum, to have their individuality, importance and contributions recognised in their own right.
Of course, for parents, these lofty ideals are difficult to put into practice. We have a vested and emotional interest in our children and this can sometimes be overplayed into all the common "mistakes" of imposing impossibly high expectations of achievement, or refusing to let go, or failing to encourage or to respect.
Just as parents must learn the rule that their offspring are not perfect, children, too, benefit later in life from appreciating that parents most often do their best while also not being perfect.
There are times in my own life when I know I disappointed my father. When I dropped out of an engineering degree, for instance. However, he gave me much encouragement and practical support and, when I chose to live on the other side of the world, the freedom to do so unencumbered by guilt. He put my needs ahead of his when it mattered. Vale John Robert Bright, a great father to me.
Jim Bright is professor of career education and development at ACU and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy. Email marked clearly "FOR PUBLICATION" to brightside@jimbright.com.