Hand-Me-Down Dreams: How Families Influence Our Career Paths and How We Can Reclaim Them

In this clear-sighted and sympathetic primer on achieving career satisfaction, Jacobsen argues that all children are given straightforward and subtle messages by their families about career choices they should make as adults. In many cases, mothers and fathers influence children to fulfill the parents' thwarted dreams rather than encourage them to decide for themselves. A clinical social worker who has presented workshops on this subject for college students and management professionals for the past seven years, Jacobsen aims her message at young adults who are making initial career choices, older adults who are unhappy in their work and looking for a change, and retirees who now have an opportunity to try something more in harmony with their inner yearnings. Drawing on the tenets of family systems therapy, she believes that finding genuine career satisfaction entails understanding one's family history and the dynamics that may have resulted in a poor original career choice. To that end, she provides a series of exercises designed to identify family influences, as well as a chapter that specifically addresses the subject of abusive parents. Once these family influences become clear, Jacobsen recommends further exercises to assist in discovering one's true self and the best ways to express it through one's life work. Agent, Felicia Eth. (Apr.)