When it became time to decide what career path we wanted to explore, how much of our decision was based solely on what our parents did for a living?
In order to understand the factors that may have influenced our career choices, Facebook data scientists Ismail Onur Filiz and Lada Adamic analyzed 5.6 million parent-child relationships in the English-speaking Facebook world to identify some notable trends.
The pair examined the listed occupations on users’ Facebook pages and were able to calculate the probability of a child selecting an occupation based on what their parents did for a living. They then mapped the major occupation categories depending on the listed options.
For example, if you’re a male and your father works in the legal profession, you’ll be 4.6 times as likely to pursue a career in medicine than the average person. Or if you’re a female whose mother is a nurse, you’re 3.75 times more likely to follow in her footsteps.
The research also saw “substantial cross-gender occupation inheritance,” where scientist fathers saw scientist daughters at 3.9 times the overall rate and mothers working in law had sons who pursued a legal profession at 6.6 times the overall rate.
The research concluded that people within a close-knit family were more likely to choose the same occupation as their parents, which was also true with twins who are more likely to be raised in a similar environment and receive similar parenting methods.
Overall, the majority of those studied followed their own path and decided on a profession that was different from their parents and siblings. So for anyone that tries to say millennials don’t march to the beat of their own drum, you are incorrect.
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