Career path possibilities are restricted by conditions such as the local economy, the individual’s education, socioeconomic status of the family, culture, genetics, and more. One predictor of a person’s occupational choices is a parent’s occupation. Lawson points out that much is known about parental occupations in terms of children’s development yet, ironically, little is known about how parental occupations influence their children’s work choices. This article is an effort to explain what Lawson calls “parent-child occupational consistency” (PCOC).

The study of PCOC is not merely an interesting intellectual pursuit. As the world of work’s pace of change increases, so will the need for the next generation to consider work that is different than the current generation. It is not the business of CDPs to shape people’s choices, but it is the job of CDPs to help people see the world of work clearly.

Lawson explains the various mechanisms claimed to underlie PCOC:

• Resources: There is a considerable amount of international evidence that socioeconomic status (SES) is passed on to children by virtue of parents’ “cultural capital” (access to finances, networks, skills, and knowledge). Factory workers’ kids get factory jobs, for example, because they have advantages such as the parental “in” with the employer or the factory lingo, for instance.
• Socialization: Families are their own mini-societies, with values, attributes, rewards, and environments. Perhaps occupational choice helps children fit in, an aim of socializaton.
• Modeling. Bandura’s work on modeling, which showed that children can learn vicariously from others’ behaviour, explains that perhaps children learn that their parents’ work seems to generate decent rewards and therefore enter the same occupation.
• Genetics. Assuming people chose work that aligns with their personality and knowing that genes influence personality, some researchers have argued that genetic similarities account for PCOC.
• Culture. Although little research has examined culture re: PCOC, Lawson notes that it is quite possible that culture can influence both parents’ and children’s attributes and choices. Consider, for example, how occupational choices can be limited by one’s sex.
• Cognitions. Beliefs and perceptions about parents’ work can shape children’s views of the work they should do. These beliefs have been shown to be a greater influence than the reality of the parent’s work.

Reviving an older model by Ryu & Mortimer, Lawson seeks to tidy up this area of research with a model that incorporates the complexities of the phenomenon (especially the 2-way nature of parent-child relationships) in the hopes that the model will serve as a research agenda on the topic. The figure below is a highly simplified version of the many variables involved and their possible influences on each other. And, as complex as the full model is, Lawson points out that it does not account for the influence of peers, other family members, or life circumstances.

Lawson argues that the cases for each mechanism have flaws, including lack of evidence, overlap with other mechanisms, and, most importantly, the assumption that they all describe one-way streets: that is, the child is influenced by but does not influence the parent.

One takeaway for CDPs is the reminder that career development is extremely complex, involving systems of systems interacting with each other. Mapping out the many variables involved in one “simple” aspect of career development, such as parent-child occupational consistency, is a painstaking task that will be followed by years of research. However, it is this kind of work that can reveal the best conditions for and timing of the right interventions to truly be helpful to people.