What factors influence the choice of profession: school, family, friends, personal abilities

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

In this article we will not talk about what needs to be done and what rules to follow in order for your child to decide on further professional orientation. You will not find practical advice on choosing a life path here either. We will try to reveal as much as possible a number of features that can prevent a teenager from solving this difficult task, but the environment only needs to try to avoid them.

Every one of us has to face at least once…

Perhaps, in the vast majority of cases, each of us does not make any fateful decisions, guided only by independent conclusions. Often, relatives, close friends and just people who influence our life and work in general come to our aid. Therefore, our decisions are based on the life experience and views of the representatives of the society around us, whose opinion we care about.

It is extremely important for a person making this very choice to make an objective analysis of the information received from the outside and form their own conclusions from there. Close people, in turn, need to convey information in the most correct and convincing form to someone who is in a difficult situation. Especially if this someone is a teenager who determines his future life path.

So, what factors influence the choice of profession? Below we will try to understand this and reveal this topic as much as possible, which will be useful both for young people at the beginning of an independent life path, and for their parents.

The role of self-regulation in professional self-determination

The basics of choosing a profession lie in the direct vision of the world around the subject. And this means that the level of mental awareness of a person (in our case, a teenager) plays an important role on this path.

In other words, the child should be able to assess their own capabilities and characteristics of personal thinking with the goals that he sets for himself in the future. In modern psychology, such teenagers are given the title of "autonomous thinkers", because they, like no one else, can independently determine their own place in life and, accordingly, in the labor niche.

In order to find out how a person is able to decide on this most important task, you can conduct a test for choosing a profession, which, by its results, will show the level of self-determinationindividual.

The influence of the family on the future speci alty

However, often by the age of 16-18, a child is not yet able to have the proper level of self-sufficiency in order to determine his future path in the main activity without any problems. Therefore, the choice of a working profession in many families is based on collective agreement, weighing all the pros and cons. Sometimes this happens explicitly, sometimes - only as an indirect influence on the child.

Often, parents, without realizing it, impose this or that life path on the child, and one cannot say that this career guidance position (choice of profession) is correct from a psychological point of view. Either this happens because of one's own unfulfillment, or because this path is a tribal field (dynasties of teachers, doctors, lawyers). In general, the motives for choosing a profession are different. But such an approach leads to the fact that the individual chooses a job not to his liking: he works at an unloved job or - worst of all - has no predisposition to one or another speci alty.

Sociological aspect of choosing a life path

What factors influence the choice of a profession if a teenager is not mature enough to make fateful decisions on his own? That's right, the opinion of peers and friends. Unfortunately, this problem has been frequent for many years (and is by no means modern) - a child, when making a conscious choice, may think not about what will bring him pleasure, or about what he has a physiologicalpredisposition.

Quite often the choice of a working profession is based on a banal unwillingness to part with close friends. For a teenager, graduating from high school is always a psychological trauma to one degree or another. Therefore, if a close friend wants to become a famous doctor and leaves his hometown for further education, your child may follow him only because of an indirect fear of loneliness. An example of this situation proves the fact that parents should interfere in the process of professional self-determination of the child, but objectively.

Choosing a profession for schoolchildren - what to fear

Often, each of us is prevented from living by the so-called myths - well-established stereotypes, as a rule, having nothing to do with reality. This is a huge lump of information received, which accumulates over time and does not at all pretend to be the truth in this or that issue.

Therefore, the motives for choosing a profession are often based on these same myths. It often happens that a teenager (or even his parents, which is much more deplorable) does not have a clear set of data about a particular speci alty. As a result, an opinion about the profession can be formed based on one's own subjective conclusions. Such conclusions have nothing to do with statistical data, so the child goes to study the profession, which, only in the personal opinion of his parents (and no more), is prestigious, more in demand on the labor market and profitable.

Psychological blocks and attitudes

What factors influence career choice? More precisely, which of them interfere with solving this problem as correctly as possible? That's right - the psychological blocks and attitudes of a teenager, his lack of confidence in his own abilities, the fear of not living up to the expectations of his parents or looking worse than his peers in the eyes of society.

Often this is due to the fact that the child is afraid of not getting the required number of points when entering the chosen speci alty and losing a whole year in vain. Therefore, children often try to choose a fallback option, to pass exams for the speci alty that is less in demand among applicants. In the short term, such a picture looks great - a teenager is studying, there is no lost time. However, if you look at the situation a little deeper, then everything turns out to be much more deplorable - a broken fate, an unloved profession, and, well, a job that does not bring any pleasure.

So it's better to think twice: is this wasted year worth such extensive sacrifices?

Personal life and its impact on the choice of future profession

For modern parents, it is not news that within 16-18 years, almost every teenager has a first love, heartfelt experiences, and drama along with them. Alas, now there is so much information for modern youth that, already at such a tender age, many of them are thinking about whether their future profession will stand in the way of striving for perfect family happiness?

Mass of series,Internet resources, literature - all this makes a teenager think about whether his favorite business will allow him to be happy not only at work. And again, I want to assure everyone that all these speculations are just another myth. The doctor is different for the doctor, and the lawyer is different for the lawyer. Whether your child will be a workaholic, how much he will give to work - only time can answer this question. Therefore, you should not even think about the interaction of personal life and work when choosing a child's future profession.

Professor Klimov and his view on solving this problem

Dr. E. A. Klimov has been studying the issue of adolescent psychology and labor orientation for many years, so he has his own view on what factors influence a teenager’s choice of profession.

He deduced a number of driving factors that directly influence the self-determination of the child regarding his future activities.

First of all, the opinion of relatives plays a role, who are responsible for the further life path of the child both to society and to themselves. Therefore, on the ladder of factors, according to Klimov, the first step is the vision of parents.

An important role is played by the close environment of a teenager - his friends and comrades, teachers who have authority, who influence the choice of the child somewhat less than older family members.

And only after that are the immediate plans of the child and his own vision of further professional orientation, wishes and pretensions to this or that activity. And the last stage of influence is occupied by the abilities of a teenager, his mindset, the ability to engage in a particular profession.

As you can see, from a psychological point of view, the test for choosing a profession in practice is not so popular among applicants. Since few people think at the beginning of their own life path about whether they will like the chosen activity after several decades, whether they will be given work with ease.

And some statistics

In our country, the system of information support for applicants is sufficiently developed, so everyone can apply to a higher educational institution they like and get the necessary summary of facts in a particular speci alty. But, as practice shows, from year to year, teenagers choose their future path quite spontaneously, not guided by any career guidance advice.

As a rule, two-thirds of applicants cannot decide until the last moment with the choice of a speci alty, but the rest are deeply convinced of their views, which are often based on the opinion of elders and the closest environment.