We Don’t Want To Be Like Our Parents

It used to be that people followed in their parents’ footsteps, career-wise. If your dad was an ophthalmologist, you became an ophthalmologist, and so on, but things are changing. In part, this is because the apprenticeship system has changed, but mostly younger generations are choosing their own profession because the “do what you love” mentality has been adopted by the last few decades. “The whole idea that work should be fun is something that was invented by the baby boomer generation,” said Jenny Ungless, a career coach at Monster.com. But parents sometimes don’t even want their kids to follow in their footsteps. One-third of male lawyers in a survey by a U.K. recruiting firm said they didn’t want their kids to have the same job as them. And some jobs — like mine — didn’t even exist until a few years ago. [BBC]