Teens Say "No" to Parents' Career Path
 Written by Deirdre Wilson from Bay Area Parent Magazine
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Thinking about turning your business to your son or daughter some day? Better think again.

   A new Junior Achievement poll of about 1,000 teens between ages 13 and 18 has found that 78 percent are not interested in taking on the same careers as their parents.  Of the teens surveyed, 82.5% of the girls and 76.1% of the boys had no plans to go onto the same career as their parents.

   While just a few decades ago children were often expected to take over a family business or choose their parents' career as their own, this hasn't been the case in the late 20th and early 21st century.

   In the poll, conducted last fall, teens said that their career interests are influenced, in the following order, by:

   - teachers and school counselors - teens ranked them as their
     No. 1 source of career information;
   - the Internet;
   - adult professionals who teens dealt with in "job shadowing;"

Job shadowing, when a teen gets on-the-job experience by working with an adult professional while following a specific school curriculum, has grown more commonplace in the last couple of years.  Several organizations, including Junior Achievement, America's Promise - The Alliance for Youth; and the U.S. Department of Labor, work together to promote job shadowing nationwide. For information on this initiative, visit www.jobshadow.org.

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