i’ve seen this alot, people either go into the same vocation or a variance of the vocation. by variance of the vocation for example i mean my cousin’s father. He is a commerical airline pilot and ex air force pilot. His son is an aeronautical engineer who is now joining the air force. Variance of the same vocation (planes).
So why do people do this? centuries were spent to free society up so everyone could choose their own path in life and alot of us do the same thing as our parents, who may have done the same thing as their parents. Are there genetic causes for this behavior? Social? Psychological or what?
We tend to inherit talents for things. If dad’s a good musician, chances are his kids will be born with a good set of pipes as well.
It’s social. Kids watch their parents in a certain vocation and think “hmm. Mom and Dad have done well selling insurance (or whatever), I can do that too.”
Family businesses. If you’ve got an automatic well paying job when you get out of school as long as you go work for your parents, chances are you’re gonna do that rather than what you really want to do. Job security trumps excitement for a lot of people.
I’ve seen some people do what their parents do but in general I think most people do what they want to do. Sometimes they just happen to like the same thing their parents do.
There’s also familiarity and networking. If one wants to go into his or her parent’s career, then they may already know a thing or two about it or the environment of the job, and it may be easier to get into that career because there’s a parent (who ought to know people and have friends) to hold open the door.
For a long time, the only way to really get into a career was to apprentice for somebody else and then become a partner, continue to work under them, or go off and start your own business. If your dad was a carpenter, then chances are you’d become his apprentice, particulary since he’s probably already taught you a thing or two about the trade as you grew up.
I am a librarian, like my mother before me. And my aunt, too. It’s even possible that my sister will wind up a librarian.
I have one brother (out of three) who is a computer guy, like his father before him. Most of my siblings are pretty good with a computer. Oh, and I married a computer guy, too. Make of that what you will, Freudians.
What can I say? We grew up surrounded by books and computers, and it rubbed off. I guess becoming a librarian at all occurred to me because of my mom; I was already a literature major (and we know how employable lit majors are!) when I decided to go to into librarianship–it was something that would let me be employed, read a lot, and I wouldn’t have to focus on one subject (such as, say, European literature of the 30’s). I’m much better at knowing a little about a lot of things, and hey, what sane person wouldn’t want to spend as much time as possible in a library?
I’ve enjoyed it a lot, and it’s fun to talk shop with Mom. I didn’t have ‘connections’ from her at first, but now that we live in the same town–one with a severe dearth of libraries and people to run them–we do wind up working with the same people and getting connections from each other.
You are a librarian? Can I send you flowers ? People like me consider you as a life saviour; miracles of efficiency ready to help us with the most impossible requests to provide us with dusty works and even dustier documents.
About the OP.
I guess it depends on the circumstances you grew up in and with. I know a lot of people who choose a whole other studyfield then their parents and others who choose no to.
I belong to the first group.
Parents who really, really like what they do may pass along an interest in the work to their children. That’s what happened in my case anyway (although I made a few pitstops in other careers along the way!).