Choosing a career is a critical and crucial decision for many people. They struggle to determine whether the choice they make is going to hurt or help their future. Additionally, parents tend to intervene with the decision process and do whatever it takes for their child to take the “ideal” career path. With both the parent and the child trying to choose one future, who should be the one to make the final decision?

If parents choose their child’s career, they will be more supportive of their child’s future. Many parents who have failed their past career goals set them on their children, and seem to relive their aspirations in their child. The parent then does as much as they can to make sure that their child lives the life they wish they could live by overspending on opportunities to ensure success with that career. 

Adding on, parents have more experience in the world than their child, and therefore have a better understanding of the right and wrong decisions for career paths. In a parent’s perspective, a child could possibly end up making a bad decision for their future. The parent could act as a guide to make sure that their child makes good life decisions and doesn’t set unrealistic goals for themselves.

However, although parents seem to know everything that will lead to a successful future, the opposite may be true. Children know themselves better than anyone else, including their parents. By choosing their own career paths, children are setting themselves up for a future that they are interested in. Instead of living a monotonous life, they will be enjoying whatever career they choose based on their interests.

Furthermore, children have the right to choose what they want to achieve in the future. Every child has their dream career, and it is up to them if they want to follow their career dreams or not. Piper Guyton (9) agrees with this and says, “Children should choose what they do in the future because it is their life and not the parent’s.” In many cases, children do not want to follow the goals their parents set for them, and if they do, they fail to meet their parents’ expectations.

There are both positive and negative reasons for having a child or their parents choose the child’s career path. However, it is truly up to the child to decide because it is their future and their life. Even if a child’s parents do not support the career choice at first, they will eventually learn to accept it and support the child, because that is what family is for!