Why parents shouldn’t choose their children’s careers.

Choosing a career is one of the most life altering decisions one can make, does this mean your parent should choose your career for you?

Every parent has dreams of their children becoming successful. Some have even more detailed and elaborate dreams where they see their children as an engineer or lawyer.

According to Workman (2015), parents will be more likely to be supportive of their children’s careers if they were the one who chose it. They may choose their children’s careers because they had dreams for themselves that they may have not been able to accomplish. Many parents may believe they should choose their children’s careers because they know better, but they shouldn’t.

As a parent, if you were to choose a career for your child, there is a high chance that may build resentment between you and your child. This resentment may come from the child due to them not pursuing a career that they are passionate about, or from the parents if the child is not performing well because they do not like the chosen career.

Poor performance while studying towards an unwanted career led to a waste in resources and most importantly energy from the child. Children will perform better when working towards something they are passionate about, whereas when they are studying towards something they aren’t passionate about, they lack motivation to study (Collier, 2019).

Parents also need to understand that the world is changing. Most of their concerns are centered around not being able to find employment or make a good living off your passions. In the world we live in today, many people are making lots of money just from following their passions.

Psychometric assessments could be of huge assistance when it comes to choosing a career. Psychometric tests help clients to figure out where they would excel in terms of different skills required for different careers.

Psychometric tests also test one’s personality to see how they would respond in different work environments and see where they excel.