View of CHANGING CAREER LANDSCAPE: PARENTS LIMITED AWARENESS OF CAREERS AND ITS IMPACT ON CHILDREN CAREER SELECTION

(1)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 18 CHANGING CAREER LANDSCAPE: PARENTS LIMITED AWARENESS OF CAREERS AND

ITS IMPACT ON CHILDREN CAREER SELECTION Ishu Jain

Ph.D Research Scholar, Manav Rachna University

Abstract- Parents spend very limited time and energy on exploring enormous changes in Career Landscape (Career Outlook.). Most are driven by the framework that they faced when they were choosing careers with some addition of what they have observed and experienced in nearby surroundings.Parents continue to be the key influencers when high- schools’ students are deciding which area of study to pursue at the undergraduate level.If not parents, it could be other members of the larger family like uncles/aunts or in some cases, friends of parents. Peers are next. Teachers actually play a minimal role.And a recent survey by Mindler, an online career-counselling platform on career selection awareness among Indian students has disclosed that a shocking 93% of the students aged 14 to 21 were aware of just seven career options though there are more than 250 contrasting job options available in India-- most newand in-demand. Note that we are preparing our kids for next 35-40 years. So, there is a great need to update the parents and fill the gap in their lacking knowledge of latest career choices.

Keywords: Career advice, Career Landscape, Career Selection, Career choice, Vocational Guidance, Parents Awareness, Parents role, Changing career options, Parents Influence.

1 INTRODUCTION

Selecting the right career is one of the most critical tasks for teenagers. However, this can be a time of exploration for some youth, it is also related with great anxiety associated to issues of Decision-Making (Brown & Strange, 1981).In the course of transition from school to college/ universities, students are required to select a specific profession or course of study. Very few children — under 5 percent — are in the right direction as they pursue higher education. Despite extensive support in the form of career counsellors in most schools, majority of the students select the wrong career choice after high- school. This builds up into low performance in the University academics and leads to a stressful life, unhappiness, and unfulfillment of purpose. As they lose confidence, rising technology takes charge of their jobs. Their dreams lose existence, before they ever got the possibility to begin.21st century is the most energetic and fastest space in the history of mankind. Huge changes happening in the technological field is revolutionising every sphere of life. Children need strong, illuminated and learned assistance to make the correct decisions about education and career.Finding an aim in life before you are twenty years old; Acquire knowledge continuously to reach this goal; Work hard and persevere so you can defeat all the problems and succeed (Abdul Kalam). Hoyt (1984) was among the first to highlight that parents have both the right and the responsibility to become involved in their children’s career decision- making.

Research shows, 76% of the children are influenced by parents when it is about education, career and any other crucial decisions relating to their future. In a report published in Eric Digest No: 164, Lankord (1995) observes that young people devise their opinion about career and work as a result of interaction with the family.Specifically, family members and parents play a significant role in the choosing career of an individual. Parents play a significant role in laying the foundation of their children's career (Tella, 2003).

Studies have shown that adolescents speak more frequently about career issues with their parents (Otto, 2000), and name parents as a major influence during educational and career transitions (Mortimer, Zimmer-Gembeck, Holmes, & Shanahan, 2002; Schultheiss, 2006).

According to Trask Tate and Cunningham (2010), this is largely due to the fact that parents- unlike educators, counsellors, and other professionals- serve as a continuous, persistent, and stable resource for their children throughout their lives. Although adolescents become progressively independent from their parents during high school, they continue to depend heavily on them in the area of career development (Seabald, 1989).(Flores & O’Brien, 2002; Keller & Whiston, 2008) have emphasized the contribution of career-related parent support to important career outcomes.Whiston & Keller (2004)surveyed more than 70 studies on how family influences career development. They figuredthat various aspects of family processes (e.g., parental occupational experiences) and

(2)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 19 aspects associated with family structure (e.g., parental educational level) were two co- dependent family related factors that should be further investigated in career development research.(Downing & D'Andrea, 1994) concluded that parents view involvement in their children's career decision-making process as a significant parental function.Family is the most important contextual feature in individuals’ career development as well as the most convenience resource where individuals seek help (e.g., Lent, 2005; Zhang et al., 2015).

Perceived support from the most influential people is likely to have more direct influence on career decision-making self-efficacy than other contextual factors (Wright, Perrone- McGovern, Boo, & White, 2014). This influence is more prominent during the period of adolescence where young individuals are forming a sense of self and clarifying their vocational identity (Rodríguez, Inda, & Fernández, 2015).

In ever-changing labour markets, parents have an increasingly crucial role to play, so there is an urgent need for those young people in education, as well as their parents, to understand not only the options within education and training, but also the sometimes- bewildering array of career progression routes available that follow (Langley, Hooley,

&Bertuchi, 2014). Parents’ career interests, self-efficacy,values, and potentials also have an impact on children`s career probing. Parents are theforemost role model for their children and may elevate or debase career exploration through modelling, discussion, or furnishinginformation. The adolescence is the supreme time for choosing career for the future and education.Recent surveys of parents and students reported that just three in five parents felt confident in advising their child about ‘how they can achieve their career/job goals’ or ‘what career/job options would be best for them’ (Knibbs et al., 2018; Lindley et al., 2019).

Young and Freisen (1992) presented a compelling contention thatparents view assistance in their children's career development as animportant function of themselves as parents.It is conceivable that how well a child performs the career development tasks is viewed as an impression of how well the parent is executing.This is backed by research showing that many decisions thataffect the entire family are influenced by considerations regardingchildren's education and Career goals (Peterson, Rollins, Thomas, & Heaps, 1982).For some time, researchers have contended that parents have a pervasive and continuing influence on their children's career development (Laramore. 1984; Lopez, 1983).In addition, the specific nature of parental involvement in children’s career development has not been adequately examined (Young & Freisen, 1992).

2 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

Many children do not have the exposure to really decide whether they are passionate about a subject while they are in high school. So, they often simply pick subjects they do well in.

No loss in that, yet it might likewise be a great idea to investigate further by getting internships with companions/family or suggesting the child to do a summer project by selecting a topic from the space of interest. One of the major challenges that parents face now a days is a lack of understanding of the options available. In today’s world, the part parents play have to lengthen and additional time ought to be committed to career-choice discussions. Ensuring that children are prepared for a fortunate and a successful career, subsequent financial security and great personal satisfaction is a pressing challenge for all theparents’. Children look up to their parents for advice and guidance even if they don’t like to admit it. Parents have assumed beliefs about success, how to be successful and what makes a ‘good job’ or a ‘perfect life’. Anything they feed back to the children is based on these beliefs and their own experiences. Parents spend very limited time and energy on exploring enormous changes in Career Landscape. Most are driven by the framework that they faced when they were choosing careers with some addition of what they have observed and experienced in nearby surroundings.But we have to remember that we are preparing our kids for next 35-40 years.Thus, this calls for a great need to study various alternatives to be suggested to Indian Parents in order to reduce their pre-assumptions for their children’s’ career and to reduce the wide skill gap so that changing career landscape doesn’t end up as a hinderance in the children’s career path.

3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The aim of this research is to find out the role of parents for the task of their children’s vocational guidance. This study aims to know that parents’ insights are a precondition for

(3)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 20 making the right decisions in their children vocational guidance in order to suggest ways to reduce their limited awareness.

Analysis from the study related to impact of Parents’ limited awareness about career awareness and its impact on children’s career selection: Now with the clock ticking, the unemployment emergency is irating the nation. The main cause behind this issue is that there is a huge number of youngsterscompleting their schools and colleges every year, and there are numerous new career choices and job roles being appended to many industries in well.However, the youngsters do not possess the skill types the new industries require and thus, there is a wide skill gap. And a recent survey by Mindler, an online career-counselling platform, has proved that the majority of Indian students are aware of just seven career paths, even though there are 250 career options that can be pursued in India -- most new and in-demand.Mindler conducted the survey on the awareness of career options among Indian students among 10,000 participants. The students were in the age group of 14 to 21 and hailed from all over India.93% of students were unaware of more than seven career options.

Source: Mindler

The responses collected in the survey showed that a staggering 93% of the students who participated in the survey were aware of just seven career options -- law, engineering, medicine, accounts and finance, design, computer applications and IT, and management.

According to researchers, India has various 250 career choices available across 40 domains covering 5,000 job types."Our research on over 10,000 students across India suggests an alarming ignorance of the career options available to students today," (Prateek Bhargava, founder and CEO of Mindler), who has recently launched a platform for career counselling in tier II and tier III cities across India.

Since children continually interact with their surroundings, "effective career planning would thus need to be taken into considerationalong with all the stakeholders in which parents are the most crucial. Thus, if parents can construct their own awareness related to new career options coming up, then they can play a very helpful role in their child's career decisions instead of being one of those parents who compelto select their child one of the most common careers simply because they are unaware or have limited awareness about which area would be the perfect fit fortheir child. "Children feel much more confident in choosing a particular career when they are supportedby their parents.

Thus, parents play the most important role in this entire process,"

4 SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE

Programs are already being run by various countries to make parents’ capable of reducing their limited career awareness.

(4)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 21

1.

^UK:

 Parents evenings – events are considered as a good opportunity to raise the portrait of careers and education services and the significance of career planning to parents.

 Breakfast and coffee clubs – observed as potentially superb ways of bringing parents into schools and colleges, as well as involving employers.

 Expert presentations on topics such as the future labour market, employability skills, apprenticeships, etc. – Such type of events had been well- recognized as they provide new and updated knowledge.

 INSPiRED Teenager online programme: It aims to help parents to become more confident, better informed and capable of using coaching techniques with their children.

 ‘Help your child achieve their goals’, Adviza workshops: Advizadelivers a set of three interactive workshops aimed at parents and their Grade10 children to support them with future options. Workshops are offered for 90 minutesin the early evening.

It’s first session is only for parents, whilst at the second and third workshops students attend with their parents.

2.

The Parents as Career Transition Support (PACTS), Australia: It is an Australian program based upon the understanding that parents play the most important role in supporting their children to make enlightened decisions to plan their career. PACTS was designed to help match the demand for transition support for students and their parents for an ever-changing world.The Parents as Career Transition Support (PACTS) program provides parents with up-to-date information related to their children’s transitions to post-compulsory education, training and work (Borlagdan& Peyton, 2014).The programs have been running in numerousform for thirty years. They can be delivered in various formats but the basic programme has three two-hour workshops having maximum of 20 parents per group.PACTS impact is superb as it is breaks down parent misconceptions about linear and fixed 'careers'.

3.

The CLAP for Youth Project, Hong Kong: It was launched in 2015. It includes, strategies which are implemented to increase parent involvement in (CEG) Career, Education &Guidance.For example, with the aim of increasing the awareness and readiness of parents to support their children, an award for parents was introduced.

4.

Parents Turn, Netherlands: The career intervention aimed to support parents in facilitating their children’s career building by helping them to be: up-to-date and well- informed about educational possibilities and their financial consequences, the labour market and the use of information resources; and able to make considered career decisions with their child (Oomen, 2018).

5 SUGGESTED WAYS

Most parents have a plan for their children. The roles played by them could be proactive or reactive. Being proactive means, where the parent enacts a facilitator and assists the child in understanding the available choices Reactive refers to where very little time and thought is given to the decision. Preferably, guardians ought to talk about this inside and out with their children, and the particulars of the circumstance ought to be addressed to.

Parents have to play a major role because the role of school teachers in our country is minimal, unlike in the west where most of the schools have a counsellor who assist substantially in the process. Since this is not a straightforward decision to make, getting it right is important. Therefore, it is the duty ofparents to furnish all the variables to their children, have a frank conversationin order to explore and understand the child’s interest and strengths. Ample time should be invested in orderly discussions.

Dr. Ramakrishnan recommends three areas students and parents should pay attention to when investigating various career options:

 Interest: To check if his/her interest actually matches with what your child intends to do – for example in the case of Journalism, is he really interested in interacting with people and helping them?

 Skills: Does your child has the required skills, or the opportunity to develop these skills? Skills required to be successful as a doctor is different from getting a medical college seat. For the latter, you need to score high marks and score well in an

(5)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 22 entrance exam. But to become a great surgeon, for example, onewould require excellent hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, the ability to work well under pressure, empathy, and good communication skills.

 Lifestyle: Does his vision of the lifestyle he foresees actually match the career of his choice? For example, if you become a Sales professional, you may have to travel a lot and be away from your family for a longer part of the week. Is this something that he is ready to do? So, your child may need to accommodate his expectations to reality.

6 CONCLUSION

As the child approaches high school, parents should themselves become well-informed by talking to people and reading a lot. Incorporate what is before you so that you are able to facilitate the process at the right time. There is a great need to increase ‘good conversations.

Referring to various schemes and programmes being run since years in various countries of the world, we should also look for the application of such schemes in order to reduce parents limited career awareness. In this regard, a parent handbook guiding them about vocational guidance can be prepared to be given to parents in order to make them updated.

Also, sessions with teachers and counsellors shall be arranged.

REFERENCES

1. (Barnes et al., 2020; Bernes & Magnusson, 2004)Barnes, S., Bimrose, J., Brown, A., & Gough, J. (2020).

The role of parents and carers in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported Evidence report. 1–78.

2. Bernes, K., & Magnusson, K. (2004). Building Future Career Development Programs for Adolescents.

Paper Presented at the National Career Development and Workforce Learning Event.

3. Downing, J., & D’Andrea, L. M. (1997). An effective career development program for parents. Journal of Employment Counseling, 34(2), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.1997.tb00459.x

4. DOWNING, J., & D’ANDREA, L. M. (1994). Parental Involvement in Children’s Career Decision Making.

Journal of Employment Counseling, 31(3), 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161- 1920.1994.tb00181.x

5. Krishnan, D., & Lasitha, A. (2019). The impact of parental influence on career perspectives among higher secondary students in Kerala. International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research, 8(12), 1295–

1298.

6. Kumar, S. (2016). Parental Influence on Career Choice Traditionalism among College Students in Selected Cities in Ethiopia. International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies, 3(3), 23–30.

https://doi.org/10.17220/ijpes.2016.03.003.

7. Levine, K. A. (2013). History Repeats Itself: Parental Involvement in Children’s Career Exploration.

Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy, 47(2), 239–255.

8. Lukas, M. (2015). Parental Involvement in Occupational Education of Their Children. 2nd International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts SGEM2015, 2.

https://doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2015/b12/s3.092

9. Sinacore, A., Healy, P., & Hassan, S. (1999). Parent Connection: Enlisting Parents in Career Counselling.

Canadian Journal of Counselling, 33(4), 317–335.

10. (Downing & D’Andrea, 1997; Lukas, 2015)Barnes, S., Bimrose, J., Brown, A., & Gough, J. (2020). The role of parents and carers in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported Evidence report. 1–78.

1298.

https://doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2015/b12/s3.092.

19. (DOWNING & D’ANDREA, 1994; Krishnan & Lasitha, 2019; Kumar, 2016; Levine, 2013; Sinacore et al., 1999)Barnes, S., Bimrose, J., Brown, A., & Gough, J. (2020). The role of parents and carers in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported Evidence report. 1–78.

(6)

VOLUME: 08, Special Issue 03, (IC-NCOCS-2021), Paper id-IJIERM-VIII-III, June 2021 23

1298.

https://doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2015/b12/s3.092.