The Jobs You’re Most Likely to Inherit From Your Mother and Father – The New York Times

How often a man has the same job as his:
Father	2.7× as likely
Mother	2.0× as likely

How often a woman has the same job as her:
Father	1.7× as likely
Mother	1.8× as likely

Try these jobs to start: Bartenders, cashiers, elementary and middle school teachers, lawyers, doctors and structural iron and steel workers. Some jobs are not available due to low sample size.

The estimates, drawn from General Social Survey data between 1994 and 2016, show that mothers, despite working in lower numbers, are still influential in inspiring their children’s career choices. And the passing down of occupation and other measures of socioeconomic status seems to affect boys more than girls.

Some of the jobs most likely to be passed down include steelworker, legislator, baker, lawyer and doctor. Children are less likely to follow their parents’ careers if they are middle managers or clerical or service workers. These findings broadly align with previous research.

“It’s not just a matter of education or what your parents can buy — there’s something about the occupations themselves,” said Kim Weeden, chairwoman of the sociology department at Cornell University, who is researching the topic with April Sutton, also a sociologist.

It’s another example of the powerful role family circumstances play in shaping children’s lives. Children with unemployed parents were more likely to say they didn’t know what they wanted to do for work, they found. “There’s an inheritance of advantage but also disadvantage when you talk about occupational plans,” Ms. Weeden said.

A big factor in passing down occupations — and advantage or disadvantage — is the connections parents offer children. Children who pursue the same job as their parents often start ahead, whether through inheriting a family business, getting an internship at a parent’s company or having a parent put in a good word with a colleague.

“If people lack financial capital, they likely lack these other types of capital as well,” said Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard. “For all of these reasons, the world is not a very fair place for some kids.”

Some fields are particularly dynastic, like Hollywood acting or politics.

…Children often pursue their parents’ jobs because of the breakfast-table effect: Family conversations influence them. They fuel interests or teach children what less commonly understood careers entail (probably one reason textile spinning and shoemaking are high on the list of jobs disproportionately passed on to children). In interviews, people who followed their parents’ career paths described it as speaking the same language.

Certain aptitudes may be inherited. Families also have their own cultures, reflected in how they value spending time — whether making things by hand, achieving academically or filling the home with art and music. People described flirtations with other careers as teenage rebellions before settling into a parent’s occupation.

How Frequently Do Daughters Share an Occupation With Their Parents?

Father

Fishers	362x as likely
Textile machine operator	159
Medical and laboratory techs	126
Aircraft mechanics	118
Librarians	106
Printing press operators	91
Packaging machine operators	39
Electrical, electronics and electromechanical assemblers	28
Lawyers	27
Doctors	19

Mother

Military officer	281x as likely
Shoemakers	135
Metal and plastic workers	105
Dishwashers	91
Human resources managers	78
Textile machine operator	75
Textile workers	65
Textile winding and twisting machine operators	60
Factory workers, food preparation	49
Travel agents	48

…Though research has focused more on fathers, mothers have always influenced their children’s career paths, social scientists say. “What we’re learning is that both parents are quite important, and quite important for both boys and girls,” Ms. Weeden said.

In our analysis, sons are 20 times as likely to be a scientist if their mother is one. Gil Rabinovici is the son of Sarah Bacus, a cancer scientist, and Eliezer Rabinovici, a theoretical physicist. After giving up the idea of becoming the next Steven Spielberg or playing third base for the Chicago Cubs, he became a neurologist, studying memory disorders at the University of California, San Francisco.

How Frequently Do Sons Share an Occupation With Their Parents?

Father

Textile machine operator	415x as likely
Boilermakers	275
Fishers	275
Drywall installers	136
Structural iron and steel workers	135
Door-to-door sales workers	130
Cabinetmakers	127
Prepress technicians and workers	116
Textile workers	105
Railroad conductors	94

Mother

Paralegals and legal assistants	191x as likely
Bakers	66
Credit counselors and loan officers	58
Postal service clerks	43
Clinical laboratory techs	38
Bartenders	36
Hairdressers	26
Butchers	24
Packaging machine operators	18
Child care workers	16

“I think seeing work for them growing up as a passion rather than a chore is something I’m sure had an influence on me,” he said.

The effect of his mother’s science career has been intergenerational, he said: His 9-year-old daughter spends time drawing neurons and brain schematics. “It definitely influenced how I view gender, and probably having a strong role model as a scientist influenced her,” he said.

…Yet over all, parents have less of an effect on daughters than on sons, in career and socioeconomic status more broadly, according to research.

One explanation is that previous generations of mothers had fewer job options than their daughters, so their daughters consider a broader range of jobs. Men, meanwhile, are unlikely to take jobs that haven’t typically been done by men.

Because daughters are less likely to work or earn as much, parents might invest more in sons’ careers. But more likely, researchers said, parents invest equally, and women make more career compromises because of family obligations. Especially with young children, some women “can’t do the jobs that they wanted or were trained to do by their parents,” said Melinda Morrill, an economist at North Carolina State University.

The General Social Survey analysis is not conclusive. For instance, because of the small sample size, we could not control for age, which matters when considering how women’s careers are affected by motherhood. The survey may also misclassify the dominant career of the parent. Survey respondents were asked only what their parents’ latest occupation was, so if the parent was a steelworker in the prime of his career, but now is a greeter at Walmart, the survey would classify him as a greeter. The same is true if the parent is now retired.