Familial Influences on Career Development

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The Impact of Familial Influences on Career Development Introduction Family has been one of the earliest influences on individual experiences and has been significant in charting the course of many lives. Various researchers such as Kotrlick and Harrison (1989), McNair and Brown (1983), O’Neil et al. (1980), Orfield and Paul (1994), and Trusty (1996) have long concluded that families, especially parents, have played a major role in the career development of their children (as cited in Clark and Horan, 2001, para. 1). These decisions eventually lead to the development of successful or unsuccessful careers depending on the impact of the intervention. There are various influence factors put forward by the numerous literatures that is purported to have a profound effect on a child’s career and educational decisions. The purpose of this review is to determine if the literature agree on the impact of familial influences on career development or if there are differences in opinions. This will help career counsellors, parents and other interested parties see the changes, if any, in the research done over the years which will help them understand what the new theoretical views are and use them in career counselling and development. To achieve this, this paper will focus on four factors, which are, (1) parenting style/child rearing pattern (2) parents’ career, work values and work related attitudes and behaviour (3) parent’s education and socio-economic status and (4) gender stereotyping and the gender of parent and child. The following definitions will be used throughout the literature review and as a result, they have been singled out and defined for greater clarity. Definition of Terms 1. Impact strong effect or impression (Collins’ dictionary) 2. Familial of a family or its members; something that has a tendency to occur in a
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