As for me, well, I am the first in my (very large Irish Catholic extended) family to go go college, let alone grad school. My parents were both in the NZ navy, (I don't interact with my father) and my mother is now a buyer for a food processing factory. It was a given, growing up, that I would go to college because it was basically free in New Zealand when I started at least.

My mother took a lot of flak from my aunts and uncles because I "didn't have a real job" until I was 26. That kind of sucked. Now, I have a few cousins who have gone to college as well, one's a banker, another an engineer, but for the most part my family is strictly blue-collar or in the NZ military (such that it is).

Neither of my parents have a college degree - they both come from military families and my dad just sort of started working as an electronics technician when they got married. My grandfather went to flight school instead of college to avoid being drafted, and then was trained as a civil engineer. So now I'm a mechanical engineer which involves sort of the same skills, but I got a degree first.

My mother was a stay-at-home-mom who works off and on as an administrative assistant/executive assistant/quality assurance/etc. She is very detailed and efficient: two skills that I make a very poor attempt at emulating.

My dad was one of those bank managers with no education type guys - which seemed possible back then. My mom...well she was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of years, who then sort of morphed into an entrepreneur as marital woes seemed to make stay-at-homing less possible. Then after being one of the hardest working people I know, she married money. Heh. It did sort of work out that way for her, but it is much less crass than that sounded.

So...no, I haven't followed in anyone's footsteps really. I'm not a stay-at-home mom (or dad even) and I've not married money. Maybe next time? A fella can dream, no?

In a way, though, I am sort of like my dad. I do have an under-grad degree, but it's not relevant in my career (which is pretty much IT based) but my general smarts and ability to learn ARE relevant. I kind of think that's likely what worked for my dad. That was a long time ago though (just recently noted the 26th anniversary of his passing in fact) and my guess is that there were lots of White Men(tm) who got Good Jobs(tm) based on them being White Men(tm) back then.

My dad was an engineer, who worked in the wire-manufacturing industry his whole life, and in the last decade or so of his career even did some work with superconductors.

My brother appears to have gotten all his "math" genes (he works in finance). My mother was a stay-at-home mom, but she was always the more language-oriented person of the two, so I think I probably ended up in journalism partly from her influence.

No, my dad was a truck/factory equipment mechanic and I'm a software engineer. He would have been very unhappy with me if I had following in his footsteps, he didn't want his only son to have to work hard for a living. My mom managed to become a non-profit manager without having a college degree. The job caused her to spend a lot of time with big corporate executives who probably assumed that she had a degree or two since she was so articulate and well read. The days of working your way into a white collar career without a degree are probably over though.

My mother was a teacher and my dad did a number of things: farming, carpentry/construction, and truck driving. I'm an editor. I think I could have been a reasonably good teacher, but I'm too introverted to be happy teaching. I don't mind training people at work or working with kids sometimes but as a 9-5 job, no. I hate the idea of having to be "on" all the time. My mother never pressured me to teach or tried to guilt me for not doing so, but she was disappointed that I didn't want to, and every once in awhile she bursts out with something along the lines of "You never even considered teaching!!" I do have a degree in English from York University, just as my mother does.

I never considered doing the kind of things my dad did for a living. I doubt he ever thought of it either. Of my three brothers, one became a farmer, and the other became a trucker and mechanic, so he's certainly got a couple of kids following in his path and doesn't need me to do so.

I'm pretty sure that when/if I have a kid it won't matter to me that she does what I do, and even that the odds are I would be against it if she did, because I'd probably think she was better suited for something else.

Father owned a franchise ice cream store (Foster's Freeze) and mother was stay-at-home until father died, at which time she took over. Mother's in-laws sold the property out from under her, as they had, years in the past, helped my dad set this up.

So, no, not nearly the same job as I have now.

To answer the latter questions: I never considered following in my dad's footsteps, because his job was so technical that I STILL can't wrap my head around it. So it wasn't really even an option.

My father wss a high school teacher, and one of my sisters and I both married high school teachers, although the subject areas differ, and Mr. Baby wasn't a teacher when I met and married him - and now he also teaches at a University. So that's sort of interesting. Otherwise, I see no influence. My parents were difficult for me in many ways, but to their credit, they never tried to influence my choice of interests/career or friends.

Yeah, pretty much.
My mom is a literacy specialist and my dad writes children's books, and I....edit textbooks.
I'm actually the first one in my immediate family to have a corporate-ish job. They don't understand why I can't go on summer vacations with them and boggle at the idea of only 2 weeks vacation time.
I thought about being a teacher and my mom discouraged me and wanted me to do something more lucrative. Joke's on her! Publishing pays crap! haha.

There are actually a lot of teachers in my family.
My mom, her sister, her other sister is a librarian, my cousin is a principal, another is a guidance counselor, and my grandmother was a child psychologist.

My father did 20 years as a lawyer with the Marines, tried corporate law and hated it, and then became a middle school teacher. My mother was a homemaker. They are both very smart and love culture- theatre, movies, art, books- which has definitely rubbed off on all of us in different ways. They encouraged/expected us to go to college, and we all did. The only thing that didn't rub off was my father's intense desire that I move to NYC and become a big Broadway actress, a career I have no interest in pursuing at this time.

In my early teens, I wanted to be a market researcher like my dad, but that desire wore off at some point. Both of my parents have advanced degrees in sociology and that has always been an amateur interest of mine.

There was never any question that I would go to college, and part of the reason I went to grad school when I was 27 was that I knew it was a disappointment to my dad that I hadn't gotten as far as they had academically.

My father was a journalist, and my mother was a nurse, social worker and advocate for the mentally retarded. In other words, employment for the good of humanity is more important than earning money. I knew I couldn't be a nurse (the only one of those that does make money) because I'm terrible at things like memorizing lists of drug names, and I spent more than 15 years doing humanitarian work and some journalism before I realized that starving is not something I enjoy. Or interacting with people much either, for that matter. I listened to them too much (about many things) and wasted many years doing things not right for me, but that's entirely my own fault for not having more imagination.

My father worked on an assembly line building office desks. My mother was a housewife. I did just about everything else. However since I can't hold a real job anymore, I wouldn't mind becoming someone's housewife now. I would love keeping house for someone, having a cocktail ready for her when she gets home from work and supper ready to go on the table. I would be a proper Samantha!

The timing of that was purely coincidental.

My dad started his career as a computer programmer, although I didn't know about it until much later -- by the time I was at the age of remembering things and even having a vague idea what 'jobs' were he'd already moved up the ladder into management positions.

My becoming a web developer had nothing to do with any conscious following of footsteps, but I remember as a kid he would occasionally bring one of those early portable computers (these sort of things) home from the office, and we got our own home computer pretty early on. Without exposure to those I doubt I'd be doing what I am now. So there's that.

Not even close. My father was an engineer for the company that made circuit boards for telephones, and my mother is a housewife who did some office work at a high school before her marriage. I'm an editor at a state legislature.

My mom's a nurse and I'm a bit squeamish about real injuries (IE those not caused by me in video games or zombies in movies), so no dice there.
Stepdad runs a cardboard box factory, so nope.

My dad, um, sold computers. Before that he worked in a book store. I... sold computers before being laid off, and I will be... getting a degree in English.
Ugh.


My cousin did become a nurse, though... and she has the same birthday as my mom (only 25 years later). I always found that funny.

Nowhere near it. Pops wa a mechanical engineer, mom was an accountant. I work in a library. My brother does home improvement stuff. (So he wound up closer than I did, but he only took a few college classes and said fuck it.)

I pretty much gave up on math sometime in elementary school after many evenings of sitting at the dining room table crying and being told that I wasn't allowed to go to bed until I finished all my homework and having pops yell at me because I didn't understand it.

I will say I tried to avoid doing anything even remotely related to what they were doing because I could tell that they were both vastly unhappy with their jobs, but just didn't want to change because OMG YOU MUST HAVE A CAREER! and all that.

Nope. Actually I'm the first one to have gone to University in my family.

My Dad had several jobs as his career was as a singer... his last longest job though was as a Registered Nurse.

My Mum after their divorce went to school to get secretary skills, and worked in a company making buses until she and my step father moved to the outback to live on aboriginal communities and work as administrators.

I'm a web designer.

Well, an interesting question to answer. Three generations back in all directions my family were basically farmers, although one great-grandfather was a carpenter-builder. My paternal grandfather went to college, though, and then became a professor of mathematics education at the University of Chicago and an author of a popular series of New Math textbooks. My dad was a historian and became a director of two historical societies. My mom -- the daughter of a Studebaker mechanic -- got a degree in art history but has never been able to use it; she has worked for a library and as a social worker, both professions where there's a clear professional divide between those who have degrees and don't. Both of them attended the U of C, where they met.

I really think I would have been happier if I could have gotten into Chicago. I really would have been good at being that type of academic. Unfortunately, I barely made it into a local liberal arts college and flunked out, and have never really made it back. I fell into IT by accident, back in the days when "more than passably good with computers" was a pretty rare qualification, but couldn't get my own career into the upper level that I wanted.

Now that my caregiving duties for my dad's dementia are ending, I'm trying to think of new directions. I'm 45, no college degree. I dn't think I really enjoy or feel fulfilled by IT anymore. It would be fun to run a web company and I have some ideas along those lines. (I feel really disappointed that even though I knew about the internet and web when "you had to explain what they were", I've never been able to exploit that effectively. Like by starting a stupid pet products portal.) Anyway, I still know that I would have enjoyed a life in academia, and now that I'm ... almost ... middle-aged :) I have more acceptance of myself and I'm facing mortality with diabetes and potential genetic early-onset dementia myself, so maybe I'm going to want to go back to school. I want to make sure the rest of my life is a bit happier, at least.

Cool question.

My dad was an electrical engineer. Mom was mainly a housewife who taught occasionally. They both had many hobbies: music, theatre etc.

I'm a designer (space - residential) which blends some of both of them. The engineering piece to think practically, and the creative piece from mom to dig for solutions. I'm not sure where the speed & tenacity comes from, other than constantly trying to keep up with 3 older sisters & my parents.

My mother was a secretary/administrative assistant for years. Now she's an IT manager for a small company, thanks to all the exposure to computers my brother and I have given her (we even fixed her computer this past Memorial Day). So you could say, in some sense, that she's following in my footsteps.

Heh, interesting to see how many mothers were SAHM or pink collar professionals. My nana was a char-woman and grandad was a bricklayer so they were proud of my mother when she left school at fifteen to be a secretary. My dad worked in factories. They expected their children to get a university education (I was pushed towards being a teacher. but at that time the schools were impossible to get in). I feel I kinda fell into the library world but I have a job I really enjoy that pays very well with generous vacation time so I think I will stay in it. I'm now half-way to retirement (god, that freaks me out) so I don't see the point of massive change. Except that I am going back to school to upgrade my education before my brain atrphies. I'll be getting my pension just as my youngest graduates secondary school, so I may do something different then.

I am not anywhere close to my parents professions, but decisions they made when I was growing up strongly influenced the profession I ultimately chose.
Dad was programming computers when I was very small. Our first 'personal computer' took up a room and hummed so loudly you could hear it outside.
Mom was trained as an accountant, but went executive track, ultimately becoming the first female vp of sales for the corporation where she worked.
Neither of them had much time for me, my siblings or eachother (ultimately they divorced and remarried). They spent a great deal of time being stressed out and embroiled in lots of office politics. I knew early on I wanted nothing to do with the long hours and the swearing and cursing and bringing the work home.
Dad passed a long time ago, and mom is winding down her rather storied career, and the path I chose for myself is translation. Having grown up in a
household(s) of immigrants who traveled and relocated a great deal when I was young, I have always been adaptable and my language skills are probably my best feature. Why not be a translator? They pay is good, I never have to deal with clients in person, and I do most of my work in pijamas.
Neat question. I have loved reading the answers.

Dad always wanted to be an engineer. By random fate, he ended up getting a degree in Physics (got a scholarship), then a degree in Education, was a teacher for a while supporting his disabled mom. Once he got married and things were less crazy, he went back to get his engineering degree. Dad was an engineer for about 30 years.
Mom never finished college. They are both retired now.

Dad tried to interest me in engineering but I never had a passion for it. I loved animals, traveling, and exploring (watched too many nature shows and Jacques Costeau) as a kid. So I ended up following that passion and am now a full time ecologist.

My mom was a SAHM until I was around 9 or 10. At that time she took an evening typing class at the local community college. She got a job at the hospital in the radiology department doing receptionist work. She then got into medical transcription and has been doing that for over 20 years and is very good at it. She went back to school for a two year degree in Health Information Management a while ago. She works from home and is employed by the same local hospital she started out with. I used to work for the same hospital before I left to stay home with my kids and then returned to work at a different hospital.

My dad was a meat cutter and then a meat manager for most of my childhood. When I was very small, and before I was born, he worked in construction and was a crane operator for many years. After the meat business he went into real estate and was a very successful real estate agent. He is retired and has been so for about five years. He is 59.

My mom kind of pushed my sister into teaching and me into nursing. My sister is a teacher and I am a nurse.

My becoming a web developer ...

You're Spiderman?

Both parents left school at 14. My father worked as a butcher, and my mother was a school dinner lady all through my childhood and teens. When she was 11, my mum had passed the exam to go to grammar school but it was the 1930s and her parents couldn't afford the uniform, so she couldn't go. At 14 she became a machinist, sewing children's coats, until WW2 started two years later, then she sewed parachutes and barrage balloons. She always wanted to be a chiropodist (podiatrist) and might well have been if she'd been able to go to the grammar school. She never passed on an opportunity to cut someone's toenails or shave their bunions for them. *shudder*

I'm the first person in my family to go to university or to get any sort of professional qualification. My sister used to sneer at my mum "I'll never end up a skivvy like you". What does my sister do now? She's a school dinner lady (albeit they call it catering supervisor these days).

Yes and no.

Mum had a very varied (ha!) work history*. She worked as a bartender, window screener, lawn mower shop owner/renter/fixer, temp at an insurance co. and, finally, at 43 or so, a mortgage loan underwriter at a S&L. She retired from the S&L four years ago when she turned 65.

I needed a job between my junior and senior years at high school. I was offered an interview at the same S&L Mum worked as a doc typist. I worked full time in the summer and went to part-time for my senior year. I was hired permanently after I was done with school. I worked several jobs there finally ending up a mortgage loan underwriter just like dear ol' Mum. I worked there for 15 years. I left all that fame and fortune behind to meet the mister. I've worked at various temp jobs here in Canuckland plus a short stint as a help desk jockey. I've been ..um.. retired for about five years.

*There were probably other jobs, but I don't recall what they were. I'll have to ask her next time I talk to her.

My father (I have no contact with him and only hear about him from Bro#1) was in the Army, afterwards he was a mechanic then a machinist. I've not done anything like that. Bro#1 was a machinist for many years but is now the chief custodian/fix-it dude for a large machine shop with government contracts. Bro#3 was in the Navy, then a mechanic for many years but is now a trainer for a major U.S. auto parts chain. Bro#2 was in the Army, then telecommunications and now owns his own landscaping company. Bro#4 is the manager of a bagel sandwich shop.

As for college/university - a couple of my mum's siblings went to college and became teachers in Oregon (my aunt and her husband taught at Reed College, dunno where my uncle taught, his wife taught at the Oregon School for the Deaf). My brothers and I didn't go to college, but I suspect most of my cousins, if not all five of them*, went (their parents were much better off than mine).

*My cousins on my mum's side, that is. I have no idea about my paternal side.

[Whoa, this went long. Sorry about that.]

I'm basically a perfect hybrid of my mom and stepdad's professions. Mom was a high school teacher and then eventually a trainer for organizational development stuff and a college instructor/professor (not sure), and stepdad was a gynocologist. I do training around reproductive health issues now and taught at the high school and college levels before I got into this field. I was highly pressured to go to med school, but I know my limitations and interests and resisted. I didn't intentionally plan to have such a relationship to their jobs, but it's indeed interesting how that turned out.

My sister and I definitely wound up following in our parents' steps to a certain extent -- my dad is an artist who was also a professor for many years before he and my mom opened an art gallery. My mom was an English teacher for awhile, too. I ended up being a book editor at an art museum, and my sister is a history professor. As kids, we were strongly encouraged (i.e., essentially trained) to go to the types of private universities that both my parents had wanted to go to, but were prevented from doing so by their parents.

The weird thing is, my parents have wound up being subtly (and not-so-subtly) critical of our professions, once they retired from their own business. My sister gets back-handed compliments about going into a job with "such security and summers off -- not like we had when we owned the gallery," and I get vague remarks about how nice it must be to work for the county and have a job for life, despite the fact that I DON'T actually work for the county and DON'T have a job for life, even though my museum happens to have the word "county" in its name.

And ever since Obama was elected my mom likes to make snide comments about "Harvard grads" -- which goes over well, as you might guess, with my sister (Harvard undergrad) and brother-in-law (Harvard Law; he and Obama actually overlapped for a year or two -- they used to take smoke breaks together). The irony is, of course, that my sister and I were coached about how we were going to go to Harvard since we were little girls -- when my sister was born, literally the first thing my mom said was "that baby's going to HARVARD." (Luckily for my blood pressure, I guess, I didn't get into Harvard, and there aren't any Evil Liberals in positions of power who went to Washington U. with me.)

Sometimes there's just no pleasing one's parents, is there?

I do the same job that my grandfather and his brother did. That my father and his brother did. That my mother, my brother, and my two sisters do.

I find this incredibly depressing.

I'm in architecture and my brother is in math/physics/statistics/computer-simulation(?) work. Nothing much in our backgrounds would have predicated our eventual jobs.

My Mom was a beautician and to this day does some part-time style and perms for a few friends. She is the creative one in the family. My Dad was a business attorney who was a sole-practictioner specializing in trying to prevent his wayward group of clients from getting into too much trouble.

The only connection I can make to my current job is the time I spent w/ my Dad building things: He loved to add on to the house, or build anything in his spare time. I followed a circuitous to get where I am today.

My brother probably has a stronger connection to the genetics of my Maternal grandfather who was a master machinist. Bro. found his calling early and has worked in that field forever.

CC - that's why it's called "A family business", n'est pas? Those seem so rare and precious nowadays...

Sometimes there's just no pleasing one's parents, is there?

This deserves to be repeated.

@scody: I wish I could have taken smoke breaks with Obama in college. That would have been fun!

Mom was a SAHM till about 1987 when she returned to the career she went to college for, accountancy. (I love telling this story, btw, so this could be long.) Mom went to school because her mother was a SAHM in the rural countryside of the Philippines and she wanted to be able to earn enough to help her mom support the family. This also included moving to the States as well.

She met my dad who went to one of the three top universities for his business degree at the newspaper where they both got jobs after college, and he'd also decided to move to the U.S., but her paperwork was further along than his. So, they got a marriage in name, she came over, worked here as a bookkeeper for a year, brought him over, and they got married in L.A.

I don't have a head for numbers at all, and in the States, Dad has always worked customer service jobs as assistant and full-time store managers. I get my love of customer service from him, which I use a lot in my new job as an assistant to a real estate broker.

But what I really want to do is write, edit, and publish.

Chupahija was a SAHM....and it would have been far better for me if she had hired a sitter and taken art classes right away instead of waiting until I was 9.
My father worked at my grandfather's bookstore until it was sold to Dayton/Hudson, manages the arcade of shops on Hollywood Bl. he co-owns with my uncle, putzed around until my godparents died, untangled their estates, ran a computer store for six years, and now is active against stopping sweatshops.

I've known I was a writer since I was five.