Career opportunities
How parents teach us independence at work
Self-direction can bring advantages in the world of work. And our parents are our role models in this.
Like father, like son: parents also influence our attitude to work. | Photo: Rupert Oberhäuser / Keystone
What’s better in a job: spending your time just completing tasks, or being able to organise things yourself? It’s long been assumed that it’s primarily our parents who influence our attitude to work. And this assumption has now been confirmed by an analysis of an empirical, longitudinal study. Mums and dads who value self-directed work indeed act as role models to their children, and those children later also tend to pursue careers with a high degree of self-direction.
The study that provided the necessary data took place in the USA. It began in 1988, lasted for over 20 years, and involved interviewing over 1,100 young people and their parents about their attitudes to work. Researchers have found a clear correlation between the two generations in the degree of importance they placed on self-direction at the workplace. Three areas were assessed to determine the extent of this: Just how varied was their work? How closely were they supervised by their superiors? And did their work comprise mostly routine tasks, or did it allow for independent decision-making?
The study also asked about the behaviour that was usual within the family of the interviewees – whether they took a more conformist approach or valued greater independence. “The data analysis revealed that such attitudes were lived out by the parents”, says Kaspar Burger, an educational sociologist at the Universities of Potsdam and Zurich who is the lead author of the current analysis. What’s decisive in determining whether people have a positive attitude towards self-directed work is whether their parents lived out related values at home – such as independence, taking responsibility and showing intellectual flexibility. This is usually a subtle, long-term process.
The study has also revealed something else. People who view self-direction as something positive also achieve higher educational qualifications than those who are willing to simply carry out tasks assigned by others. Burger suspects that valuing self-direction can also increase job satisfaction and prove advantageous in times of crisis. “People who have learned the art of self-direction are more likely to find ways and means of getting ahead in the world of work”.
