Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010055
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE FEINSILBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
It is every uncle's favorite question and one every kid gets to expect: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Mary Baldwin College psychologist Ashton Trice has been asking that question for five years of 1,200 schoolchildren - in Washington, D.C.; Boston; New Orleans; and in portions of Virginia - and says children's answers are more serious, and ought to be taken more seriously, than adults might guess.
He's learned that about 50 percent of children want to follow in the footsteps of a parent and, now that so many mothers work in diverse jobs, kids are more likely to want a job like mom's than like dad's.
The chief reason for that, he said in an interview, is that children are more likely to know what their mothers do at work. When a snow emergency or a child care crisis arises, it is often the mother who takes the child to work with her. If dad does, he likely turns the youngster over to the care of a woman, so the kids don't get to see him work anyway.
Trice, with the help of student researchers, has been interviewing children in kindergarten and in grades two, four and six about career ideas.
Some of Trice's conclusions so far:
Boys still make sex-stereotyped job choices, but girls are far less likely to do so than they were 20 or 30 years ago. Girls' top career choices are lawyer, teacher, doctor, veterinarian and nurse. Among young boys, the top choices are fireman and policeman; older boys tend to want to be professional athletes.
Children are surprisingly rational in their career choices. ``Even as second-graders, a lot of kids say they don't want to be truck drivers because they have to work such long hours and are away from their families so much,'' Trice said. On the other hand, he said, in rural Virginia, where truck driving was among the best-paying jobs, ``The kids all wanted to be truck drivers.''
By second grade, virtually every child has a career choice. But by sixth grade, 12 percent don't, and boys are more likely to be uncertain than girls. In families disrupted by divorce or unemployment, children are more likely to be uncertain.
Children from poor families differ, too. ``Economic conditions don't lower aspirations for girls, but they seem to for boys,'' Trice said. So these boys ``limit their job choices early and severely'' while the girls aim for the professions.
Trice hasn't been researching long enough to know if children's career choices forecast their future, but a study in the 1920s of gifted children found that 50 percent of them achieved the aspirations they held at age 10.
For all the rationality Trice finds in children's work choices, some quirkiness shows up as well.
For example, ``Almost all the kids who want to be lawyers are the children of divorce. The boys say they want to be a lawyer because they've heard their fathers say they've paid them all their money. And the girls have heard their mothers say something like, `If it weren't for our lawyer, we'd be out on the street.'''
Children also get strange ideas from parents' comments. ``They'll say things like, `My dad says I ought to be a lawyer because I argue all the time,''' Trice said, or a kid will draw a wrong conclusion when a parent, exasperated by a child's behavior, sarcastically says, ``You ought to be a comedian.''
by CNB