Bringing Parents Back In

Luther B . Otto

For more than a decade youth studies have reported that young people
have unmet needs in the area of career planning and guidance. The theme
was sounded early in the 1970s in the American College Testing (ACT) nationwide study of student career development (Prediger, Roth, and Noeth,
1973) in which eighty-four percent of the eleventh-graders said they could
almost always see a counselor when they wanted to, yet 78 percent said they
wanted more help making career plans. One-half to two-thirds reported
that school career planning services were of little or no help to them.
The ACT study is dated, but the same themes continue as expressed in
High school and Beyond (Peng, Fetters, and Kolstad, 1980), the career de^
velopment study (Otto, 1983a), Monitoring the Future (Johnston, Bachman,
and O'Malley, 1981), and the recent Educational Testing Service (ETS)
study (Chapman and Katz, 1983). For example, the ETS study reported that
most students feel that high school career planning resources are insufficient, and two-thirds of the seniors in Monitoring the Future wanted more
counseling to discuss education or training plans and career plans or job
choice. The American College Testing researchers were prophetic in concluding that there was--and continues to be--a sharp contrast between the
amount of help high school students say they would like to have compared
with the help they get.
The findings are consistent: young people say they need more help
choosing careers. That is not to say that young people are insensitive
or unresponsive to guidance services. In Monitoring the Future, for example one in four seniors reported that sessions with a counselor were
"quite helpful," and another one in nine said "extremely helpful." The
fact that they consistently express their needs, yet acknowledge help

Luther B. Otto is Director of the Youth Studies Division and Director

of the Career Development Program at the Boys Town Center, Boys Totm, NE.
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from school guidance services, suggests that perhaps a new set of issues
should be posed. Might the continuing criticisms suggest, first, that the
content of counseling should be expanded; and second, that the strategy
counselors employ to deliver career guidance services be reconsidered?
In this article I suggest that effective career counseling requires expansion of the traditional content it offers, I offer a rationale for directly involving parents in the career advisory role, and I describe a program that has effectively worked through parents in providing career planning services.
EFFECTIVE CAREER COUNSELING
Young people want more help choosing careers, and schools and counselors have responded. A recent National Center for Education Statistics
Study (1982) reported that from spring 1970 to f a l l 1979, the ratio of
counselors to pupils in public schools increased by 45 percent. There
were 1.1 counselors for each 1,000 students in 1970. By 1979 the number
increased to 1.6. At the secondary level the counselor-to-pupil ratio is
even more favorable: 3.68 counselors for every 1,000 high school students,
an average of one counselor for every 272 students. On the perhaps tenuous assumption that counselors are directly involved with counseling
students eight hours a day, 180 days per year, that means today's high
school students have available an average of five hours and eighteen minutes of counseling per student per year.
That would be encouraging to career guidance i f the increased counselor-to-pupil ratio translated directly into some five hours of career
guidance per student. But such is not the case. The 1983 ETS study of
career information systems in secondary schools (Chapman and Katz, 1983)
reported that in 82 percent of the cases the purpose for students' v i s i t s
with counselors is to talk about courses. That means that only 18 percent
of the visits57 minutes per student per year--are primarily for purposes
other than course counseling--including career counseling.
The average amount of time available for career guidance is not l i k e l y
to exceed one hour per year per student--even under optimal conditions.
This raises a question of whether young people's career guidance needs can
ever be met by pouring more counselors into the trenches. Suppose, for
purpose of i l l u s t r a t i o n , that schools were to continue to build the ratio
of counselors to students over the next decade at the same hefty rate they
have since 1970. By the early 1990s the ratio of counselors to pupils at
the secondary level might then be 5.34 counselors for every 1,000 students--one counselor for every 187 students. Under the same generous assumptions that governed my earlier calculations, students could then a n t i c i pate an average of one hour and twenty-three minutes of career guidance
counseling per student per year--twenty-five more minutes per year than
is now available. Would that be "enough"?
These extrapolations are more than idle exercises in number crunching.
The numbers even under optimal assumptions--suggest that students' reported needs may not be met by sustained improvements in pupil-counselor ratios
over the next ten years. "More of the same" might help, but i t would seem

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to fall short of being an adequate response to reoccurring expressions of

student career guidance needs. Perhaps we should consider ways of adjusting our game plan.
The Trait-Factor Model
Herr and Cramer (1979) observed that the development of vocational
guidance followed a conceptualization proposed by Frank Parsons seventyfive years ago. In Choosing a Vocation, Parsons reasoned that vocational
guidance consisted in a three-step process (1909).
1. A person must develop a clear understanding of his or her aptitudes, abilities, interests, resources, limitations, and other
qualities.
2. A person must develop a knowledge of different lines of work, the
requirements and conditions of success, advantages and disadvantages, compensation, opportunities, and prospects.
3. Following "true reasoning," a person must match individual traits
with occupational requirements.
Parsons's trait-factor approach set the developmental agenda for vocational
guidance. The first step, clarifying individual differences, issued in an
industry dedicated to the development of measurement instruments--e.g.,
the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. The second step, acquiring information about occupations, invited an industry dedicated to producing that
information--e.g., the Occupational Outlook Handbook. And the third step,
that people match their individual traits with occupational characteristics,
ushered in career counseling, a human services profession that assists
people in developing information about themselves, gathering information
about occupations, and making decisions about an appropriate match.
An Extended Paradigm
The trait-factor approach continues as the dominant paradigm in career
counseling. That, I suggest, is itself a curious development because during the Great Depression and more recent recessions, people's interests
changed from "How can I work out my self-concept in the work place?" to
"What do I have to do to get a job?" To extrapolate on Maslow: Nutrition
and sustenance--not developing a healthy self-concept--that's what it's
all about when the body is starving. The trait-factor paradigm has weathered social and economic upheaval for three-quarters of a century with
nary a blink--but that is not^ necessarily a complimentl A major limitation
of the trait-factor approach is that it is narrowly discipline-based. It
does not take into account the development of complimentary disdplines-sociology, economics, demography, and social psychology--and the understanding these can contribute to the career decision-making process and
to strategies for more effectively delivering career guidance services.

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I suggest two logical extensions to the trait-factor conceptualization. The first incorporates information beyond knowledge of occupations
(Parsons's step 2) and includes understanding social structural considerations that affect employment opportunities. The second is more expansive
regarding Parsons's step 3, which focuses on matching and making decisions
about the fit between individual traits and occupational characteristics.
The dominant paradigm can and must be extended to incorporate understanding significant-other influences that extend beyond the role of the counselor. The disciplines of sociology, demography, and economics inform
social structural considerations. The social psychological literature
provides a fuller understanding of the interpersonal influence processes
that affect career decision-making.
SOCIAL STRUCTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
It is almost trite to observe that ours is a fast-paced society with
revolutionary changes in the labor market. Yet the trait-factor paradigm
gives, at best, only passive attention to structural change by perpetuating a molecular focus on occupational characteristics and giving little
more than a passing nod to molar changes in population characteristics,
labor force trends, and career preparation options. Matching personality
traits with occupational characteristics may be a solution to resolving
the identity crisis during days of wine and roses, but nobody ever argued
that it was a way to keep body and soul together during hard times. Career guidance--if it is to be credible, relevant, and "alive"--must provide guidance in both good times and bad. That, it seems to me, is the
ultimate test of theory.
Population Change
An intelligent and responsible career choice in the mid-1980s depends
as much on demographic factors as it does on matching individual traits
with occupational characteristics. Career counseling that focuses on the
trait-factor match to the exclusion of population changes perpetuates two
myths. The first is that "you can be anything." That myth pretends that
we still live in the frontier era and that there is always elbow-room for
one more gold digger or sheep rancher. The frontier era mentality continues to define the counselor's job primarily as that of figuring out
whether a particular individual likes the glitter of gold or can live with
the smell of sheep. The goal is to accomplish a "good fit." But little
attention is given to the "fit" between individual needs and employment
possibilities, and between worker supply and demand features fueled by
population and labor force change rather than personal preference.
There are examples of what short-sighted counseling practice leads to.
For example, during the 1960s the demand for teachers outstripped the supply, which triggered increased enrollments in colleges of education. By
the end of the decade colleges of education mass-produced a teacher glut
that continued into the early 1980s. Enrollments have now fallen off.
But by the end of the current decade, the demand will again exceed supply

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because enrollments are not yet responding to anticipate the demand. Career guidance needs to develop and use better information on social structural changes.
Labor Force Change
Labor force changes are a second example of social structural considerations that the trait-factor paradigm ignores. Labor force changes include a substantial decline in labor force growth, the graying of America
or maturing of the work force, high-tech innovations and robotics, and the
decline of smoke-stack industries accompanied by the rise of a serviceoriented economy. Our society has been slow getting into the business of
manpower administration, and career counselors will feed the myth that
"anybody who really wants to work can find a job" if we fail to develop
and provide the kind of labor force information that informs responsible
career decision-making.
In the absence of accurate social structural information, people rely
on the media. But "news" can be misleading. For example, the new notion
is that newly developing fields in computer and laser technology provide
exceptional employment opportunities. The media focus on rate of growth
but ignore the most important considerations. The first is that the size
of an industry or occupational group has more to do with employment opportunities than does growth rate. A two percent growth rate in a huge industry offers more opportunities than a 50 percent growth rate in a small,
new industry. The second is that the news approach to career counseling
1s oblivious to the fact that most employment opportunities are created
by replacement needs, not the development of new industries or the growth
rate of high flyers.
Career Preparation Options
The trait-factor paradigm ignores systematic attention to matching
career choice with career preparation options. In contemporary society,
it is not enough for a young person to know what he or she wants to do.
Access to an occupation also requires knowing what the appropriate credentials are and what the options are for acquiring them. A much overlooked
reality is that credentials--whether degrees, certification, licensure,
or exper1ence--are efficient screening mechanisms that employers use to
hire workers. One of the most telling aggravations participants in the
career development study (Otto, Call, and Spenner, 1981) voiced at age
thirty as they looked back and reflected on their early careers was that
nobody ever explained their career preparation options. Typical of their
complaints is this comment from a registered nurse:
I chose a three-year nursing program instead of a four-year
bachelor's degree program, not knowing until after I got
into nursing school that the three-year programs were soon
to be phased out. I wasn't made to realize that four-year
nurses were the only ones who could do public health, supervise, etc.

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Today's career preparation options are as diverse as the f i e l d s of employment they serve. C e r t i f i c a t i o n programs, for example, have become increasingly popular--even in i n s t i t u t i o n s of higher l e a r n i n g ; and the d i s t i n c tions between degrees and c e r t i f i c a t e s ar.e b l u r r e d . An important component in the career decision-making process is deciding on the best career
preparation that f i t s the decision-maker's interests and needs.
Young people want more help choosing careers. Yet, according to the
1981 Monitoring the Future study and the recent ETS. study (1983), only a
t h i r d want to see a counselor more o f t e n . That suggests that wanting more
help does not necessarily mean wanting more o f the counselor's time.
Question: Instead of more time, might students need "other information"
on how population changes, labor force trends, and developments in career
preparation options have a d i r e c t bearing on t h e i r career decisions?
INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE PROCESSES
Research on the occupational achievement process is probably the most
sustained and cumulative development o f theory and empirical inquiry in
the social sciences. That t r a d i t i o n has been i n t e n t on explaining why i t
is that f a t h e r s ' levels of soeioeconomic achievement so strongly predict
sons' eventual occupational achievements. The consensus theory (Otto and
H a l l e r , 1979) for explaining the occupational achievement process is a
social psychological i n t e r p r e t a t i o n that focuses on the interpersonal r e lationships young people have with t h e i r s i g n i f i c a n t others.
Theory and research indicate that there are three social psychological
mechanisms that sequentially l i n k family soeioeconomic status with young
people's eventual occupational s t a t u s . The mechanisms i n v o l v e , f i r s t , the
young people's mental a b i l i t y and academic performance; second, t h e i r s i g n i f i c a n t others--whether parents, peers, or teachers and counselors; and
t h i r d , young people's occupational aspirations.
Aspirations
Young people's aspirations are the central mechanism in the occupat i o n a l achievement process. Aspirations refer to what a person wants.
Aspirations may be d i f f e r e n t i a t e d from expectations, which are the levels
of educational and occupational achievement that other people expect of
the person. Both aspirationswhat a person wants--and expectations-what others expect--have an important influence on young people's eventual achievements.
Some young people aspire to high educational levels--perhaps a t e r minal degreeand high levels o f occupational status--perhaps becoming a
dentist or attorney. Others have more modest a s p i r a t i o n s , say, to attending a technical school. S t i l l others drop out o f high school and say they
w i l l be s a t i s f i e d with menial jobs. Whatever the level of educational and
occupational aspirations young people have, what they aspire to is the
strongest single predictor of what they w i l l achieve.

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The question, then, is why young people differ in their levels of aspiration. Where do the differences come from? Who influences them?
Personal and Interpersonal Influences
Young people's aspirations are formed and modified in two basic ways.
First, they themselves take stock of their educational and occupational
potential. They think about themselves, their likes and dislikes, their
strengths and their weaknesses. In particular, young people take into
account their mental ability and academic performance in setting their
aspirations.
Second, other people, significant others, influence them, too. Significant others are people who are important to others in particular areas
of life. Typically, a young person's significant others include parents,
peers, teachers, and perhaps counselors. Significant others make assessments of the young person's mental ability and past performance. They
"size up" the young person, think about his or her potential , hold educational and occupational expectations, and encourage him or her along
those lines. Significant others influence young people through the normal socialization processes: rewards and punishments, teaching and reasoning, and example.
Young people have only limited arenas within which to demonstrate
their ability and accomplishment. These are closely tied to schooling,
the main activity that engages them over their developmental years. Parents, peers, teachers, possibly counselors, and the young people themselves recognize high mental ability when they see it and define people
with high mental ability as good candidates for postsecondary education-the most important avenue to high status occupations. They also recognize and interpret academic performance as evidence for later educational
and occupational achievement. In the same way, both take into account
evidence of lower mental ability and performance and adjust their aspirations and expectations accordingly.
Mental Ability and Academic Performance
The final link in the chain of mechanisms connects families' socioeconomic status with young people's mental ability and academic performance. Studies show that family socioeconomic status relates directly to
children's mental ability and academic performance scores. Higher socioeconomic families encourage beliefs, values, and attitudes that support
their children's educational achievements. They have the family resources
that provide opportunities--whether these take the form of matriculation
fees for private schools, hiring tutors, or sustaining a secure home environment conducive to study. All of these encourage academic performance,
and the demonstrations of ability, and competency that result are then
interpreted by significant others and young people as indications of
scholarly promise.

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In summary, on the basis of self-assessments and encouragement from

significant others, young people set their educational aspirations, which
is an important determinant of the level of education they w i l l achieve;
their level of education is the single most important determinant of their
eventual occupational achievement.
Parents in the Achievement Process
Parents figure prominently in theory and research on the occupational
achievement process. They are the most influential significant others that
mold the career aspirations and eventual achievements of their young people.
Parents--not peers, not teachers, and not counselors--have the biggest i n fluence on young people's career plans. I ask, "Why not put parental i n fluence to better use in advising young people's career decisions?"
The repeated research finding emphasizing the dominant influence parents have on young people's career aspirations and achievements flies in
the face of the generation gap mentality that governs much parental behavior. The notion that "my kids don't listen to me" is a myth when i t
comes to choosing careers. I t simply i s n ' t so. When i t comes to hair
style, fashion favorites, hanging-around-activity, and vocabulary, young
people w i l l do what is popular and accepted and rewarded in the high school
hallways. But when i t comes to beliefs, values, and behaviors in more
basic areas of human development--incl uding religion, political beliefs and
career plans--research is unequivocal in demonstrating that parents have
the biggest influence in molding their young people.
I t is important that young people know their interests and a b i l i t i e s .
I t is important that they know occupational characteristics. I t is also
important that they match the two. But the trait-factor paradigm is limited in that i t does not provide information on social structural considerations and use what is known about interpersonal influence processes to
assist young people making career choices.
"Doing the same, only more of i t " is no longer an adequate response
to young people's continuing cry for career guidance services. I t 1s no
longer sufficient to respond by upping the cou^nselor-to-student r a t i o ,
however helpful that may be. Other information is available--about population changes, labor force trends, and career preparation options--that
must be developed more systematically and applied more effectively in
career counseling. Moreover, there are other peopleparents, in particular--whose Influence is most important to the career decision-making
process. I propose a career counseling strategy that takes social structural considerations and knowledge of interpersonal influence processes
more f u l l y into account. The following is a description of such a program.
I t ' s an efficient way for counselors to multiply their effect on young
people making career plans.

TODAY'S YOUTH AND TOMORROW'S CAREERS

Today's Youth and Tomorrow's Careers is a seminar designed to help
parents help their sons and daughters choose careers. The rationale for
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the program is straightforward:

1.

Young people want more help choosing careers. There is abundant evidence from youth studies to support this need.

2.

Schools, teachers, and guidance counselors have tried to meet

the need; but the ratio of students to counselors precludes
providing the individualized career guidance services young
people need.

3.

Parents have the biggest influence on their young people's career plans. Though this fact flies in the face of the "generation gap" mentality that governs much parental behavior, i t has
been demonstrated consistently in fifteen years of research.

4.

Parents, too, are very much concerned about 'the problem of career choice. A Gallup poll reports that "how to help my child
choose a career" is parents' second biggest parenting concern-second only to how to deal with problems of drug and substance
abuse.

5.

I f parents are to be effective career advisers, they must prepare themselves. They must be disabused of the notion that
"my kids don't listen to me" when i t comes to planning careers,
and they must use their constructive influence wisely.

6.

I f parents are to be effective in helping their children choose

careers, they must have resources with which to work. The resources must go beyond matching young people's personality
t r a i t s with occupational characteristics to include information
about population changes, labor force trends, and career preparation options that bear on career decisions.

7.

Today's Youth and Tomorrow's Careers is a seminar for parents

that f i l l s these needs. The program works through counselors
to multiply their effectiveness by helping parents help their
children choose careers.

Today's Youth and Tomorrow's Careers provides seminars for parents of

high school-age students--the people who have the biggest influence on
their children's career plans. The seminar is an eight-hour program,
typically held over four weekly two-hour sessions, or an eight-hour weekend format. The seminar combines presentations by a trained leader with
group discussion, a f u l l y illustrated f i l m s t r i p , question-and-answer periods, special handouts, and take-home activities for parents to use with
their children.

The seminar content includes:

1. Tomorrow's employment opportunities--What are current trends in
the labor market? In what areas are the best employment opportunities? What changes are occurring in the types of jobs and
the kinds of workers needed for those jobs?
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2i

Career preparation optionsWhat are the differences between

degrees and certificates? What kinds of colleges are there?
What should parents know about vocational preparation programs;
apprenticeships; on-the-job training; and federal civil service
or military training?

3. Career planning--Win a college degree be worth it in the 1980s?

Will vocational preparation pay? What are the probable costs
and payoffs in terms of options for an uncertain future?
4. Career exploration resources--What are the best materials?
latest information? Where can parents get it?

The

5. Financial aid--The picture is changing. What will career preparation cost? How can parents afford it? What financial aid
is available? How can parents find out?
6. Career planning resources--What information on occupations and
career preparation options is available in the local career
center? The seminar includes a walk-through or discussion of
the guidance center to acquaint parents with counselors and
the basic resources.
Parents who attend the seminar receive a copy of Youth and Careers: A
Guide for Parents (Otto, 1983a). They also receive Career Explorations
(Otto, 1983b), a take-home workbook that helps parents work with their
young people to identify career interests, evaluate information about
occupations that interest them, and consider their career preparation
options.
The career development program at Boys Town developed Today's Youth
and Tomorrow's Careers under a three-year developmental grant from the
W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The seminar format and materials underwent
rigorous design, experimentation, and revision over a two-year period
before taking final form. The field testing included experimental presentations in a wide variety of settings. Informed by these experiences
and the written formative evaluations of more than one thousand parents
and nearly one hundred professional youth workers and counselors, we revised the materials and seminar model in anticipation of the extensive
third-year dissemination effort in which we are now engaged. By the end
of the third year, the seminar will be presented in an estimated 200 locations in 37 states, and about 165 professional and volunteer youth
workers will be trained to teach the materials in their local communities.
We disseminate the parents' seminars through arrangements with youth
organizations, churches, schools, and group homes. A number of demonstration seminars have been presented with supplemental funding from the
W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Others are sponsored on a cost-recovery basis.
Parents from twenty-five to thirty families typically attend each seminar.
The project also schedules training workshops that prepare others-counselors, youth workers, teachers, and clergy--to present Today's Youth
and Tomorrow's Careers in their communities. These are offered on a
cost-recovery basis.
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CONCLUDING COMMENT
Several months ago I gave an explicit assignment to my project staff.
The assignment was inductive. The task was to carefully extract from
major career guidance theories what problem the theory addressed. The
results were disappointing. What seemed obvious was that the theories
were deductive extensions of grand theories but not necessarily anchored
in present-tense human needs. I respectfully submit that career guidance
will most effectively serve today's youth by answering two questions.
First, what additional information do young people need? Second, how can
we more effectively convey it? The future of career guidance depends on
our answers.
REFERENCES
Chapman, W. & Katz, M. R. Career information systems in secondary
schools: A survey and assessment. Vocational Guidance Ouarterly,
March 1983, 165-177.
Herr, E. L. & Cramer, S. H. Career guidance through the life span.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979.
Johnston, L. D., Bachman, G. G., & O'Malley, P. M. Monitoring the future.
Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research,
University of Michigan, 1981.
National Center for Education Statistics. Counselors in local education
agencies, fall 1979 and trends since 1970. Bulletin, U.S. Department
of Education. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
December 1982.
Otto, L. B. Career explorations. Boys Town, NE: Career Development Program, 1983b.
Otto, L. B. Youth & careers: A guide for parents. Boys Town, NE: Career Development Program, 1983a.
Otto, L. B., Call, V. R., & Spenner, K. I. Design for a study of entry
into careers. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath, 1981.
Otto, L. B. & Haller, A. 0. Evidence for a social psychological view of
the status attainment process: Four studies compared. Social
Forces. 1979, 57, 887-914.
Parsons, F. Choosing a vocation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909.
Peng, S. S., Fetters, W. B., & Kolstad, A. J. High school and beyond: A
national longitudinal study for the 1980s. Washington, D . C : National Center for Education Statistics, 1981.
Prediger, D., Roth, J., & Noeth, R. Nationwide study of student career
development: Summary of results" Iowa City, IA: American College
Testing Program, 1973.
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