Follow Your Dreams, Not Your Parents’, in Choosing Career Path

Cheers and congratulations to all graduating high school seniors. Many of you have plans for further schooling in the fall. And many already have a career in mind: doctor, perhaps, or carpenter, lawyer, landscaper or computer programmer.

Maybe that career choice came naturally. You’ve discovered that you are drawn to that line of work. You’ve seen it being done firsthand, perhaps through an internship, so you know what it’s all about.

But maybe you sense that a well-meaning parent is really choosing your career for you. Possibly buried deep beneath that facade of a lawyer or electrician or an accountant is the soul of a pastry chef or a comic book artist or a trombone player or someone else you haven’t yet figured out.

Just maybe you are on the road to living out your parents’ dreams, rather than your own. Mary H. Jacobsen calls them “hand-me-down dreams” in her new book: “Hand Me Down Dreams--How Families Influence Our Career Paths and How We Can Reclaim Them” (Harmony Books, $22).

This Arlington, Mass., psychotherapist, who has done career presentations at Harvard and Radcliffe, says it’s like inheriting clothes that don’t fit. Sure, you can wear them, but they never feel comfortable.

And when you sublimate your own career desires in favor of other people’s desires, you can create unhappiness for yourself and even for your children.

“We will hand down our own unfulfilled dreams to the next generation, whether we want to or not,” Jacobsen writes.

Some parents let you know in no uncertain terms what you should do, as in: “I haven’t spent a fortune on a private school so you could waste your time studying art history. You’re going to be premed.”

Others point out that your fate is in your genes, as in: “She inherited her father’s love of argument; she’ll be the next lawyer in the family.”

Sometimes, parents say, “Follow your dreams,” and then unconsciously undercut that message through gestures, body language and tone of voice.

“It comes from a good but unrealistic place,” Jacobsen says. Parents carry messages imprinted by their own families, plus the lessons learned from their own struggles. They have figured out the balance they need between, as she puts it, “bliss and more material rewards.” But what you need may be altogether different.

It may seem a relief that someone else has made the choice for you--that life is settled and you don’t have to worry about deciding. And who knows. Maybe your family did miraculously hit on the perfect career for you. But maybe not.

Only you know if you feel queasy about the idea of becoming an engineer or architect. And only you will have to wake up every day of your life going to a job that doesn’t really let you be who you are.

Malka Edelman of the career development center at State University of New York at Farmingdale just finished presenting a four-week career program for 12 high school students.

Their parents were pointing them toward computer science and engineering, although some of these young people were more drawn to the helping professions. She encouraged them to listen to their inner interests and desires, though a couple of the young women said they felt confused by all their new ideas.

“I want to give you permission to be confused,” she told them. “Now it’s your job to explore those possibilities.”

Jacobsen believes the same thing. “You can’t help being unique,” she writes. “As your life unfolds, you discover what your interests and your talents are; you don’t decide what you want them to be. You can’t force-fit yourself into someone else’s mold. If you try, it will only be an act.”

So take the summer to think through and test out your choices. Does the path you’re heading down feel like it’s really your path, or does it feel like someone else’s? Try to find the courage to switch paths if that’s what you truly believe is right for you.