Many years ago, my son was sitting in his booster seat at the kitchen table, scribbling madly on a legal pad with a crayon. When I asked him what he wanted for breakfast, he waved me off with a shake of his head.
“I working, Mommy, or my editor will be mad with me,” he said.
He was parroting me, of course, and it was the first time I realized that my feelings about work could color his. So I set out to change my tune. No more shooing him away with explanations like: “There won’t be any more toys ever again, if I don’t finish this article.” No more describing my writing as the chore that prevented me from doing what I really wanted to do (which, from his point of view, would surely be to play with him).
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Instead, since then, I have talked about work as the linchpin in the construct of my life, giving him new words to parrot — ones like “excitement” and “satisfaction” and “joy.”
That toddler is now a teenager and part of a generation whose members are so convinced that work should be personally fulfilling that they see photocopying as beneath them. Any generalization has its exceptions (my son, I should note, in the interest of family harmony, works far harder in high school than I ever did.) But on the whole, the workers of Generation Y, the eldest of which are almost 28, have a sharply different attitude toward work than their parents did.
And that’s probably their parents’ doing.
This time of year, when middle schoolers are about to mob offices nationwide for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, the subject of children and work rises particularly close to the surface. Not to mention that college seniors will soon grab diplomas and start their first “real” jobs. But that raises a question: Which incarnation of work should we be taking our children to? The one that is fulfilling, uplifting and ego-affirming, or the one that is grueling, taxing and just plain boring?
We want them to see this as an adventure, yet be prepared for difficulty so setbacks don’t make them retreat. We want them to seek their passion, but let’s face it, we also want them to do something that will pay the rent.
I am not the only parent to emphasize the joys of worthwhile work.
“What I want most for my children is for them to find themselves in their work,” said Elizabeth Lluch, editor-in-chief of the WS Publishing Group in San Diego.
“I want them to find work that makes them feel good about themselves, helps them define who they are, and helps them find peace within themselves,” she said.
Work, she said, “is not about making a bunch of money, but finding a little niche for oneself in a world that is very fast-paced, busy and impersonal.”
Molly Bingham, who lectures and writes about choosing a career, advises parents to “ask their kids ‘What do you do that you love so much that you lose track of time?”’
That passion — the word comes up constantly in conversations about children and work nowadays — should form the core of any future career search, Bingham said.
That makes sense, but also makes me worry. Nothing about the working world is that straightforward, and lately I have been hearing from parents who have preached the gospel of fulfillment and are seeing some unexpected results.
“Do you have any advice for me?” a reader asked in an e-mail message.
She described her daughter, who will be graduating from college next month, as paralyzed by the fear that whatever job she takes would not be her passion and would therefore be wrong.
“How can I help her find her life’s calling?” the mother wondered.
At a conference recently, Carol Bryce-Buchanan, the director of development for the Families and Work Institute, shared a different wrinkle of that concern. Her daughter, also a college senior, recently found herself as one of two finalists for a coveted job, but lost it to the more experienced candidate.
“She seemed ready to give up after one setback,” said Bryce-Buchanan, whose work includes helping the Ms. Foundation create the more inclusive Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.
Surprised at her daughter’s lack of resilience, Bryce-Buchanan found herself giving the most elemental job-hunting advice, telling her that finding work, particularly in a sluggish economy, is a process that takes “months and months and months and months.”
Meanwhile, Eric Papp, the 24-year-old founder of Generation Y Consulting in Tampa, Florida, recalled how he had run into a friend who was dressed in gym clothes having just worked out in the middle of the afternoon.
“I asked how his job was going and he said it was going well but he had to quit,” Papp recounted. “He said ‘it interfered with my social life. I had to work weekends.’”
None of this surprises Daniel Pink, an author who specializes in navigating the workplace.
“This generation has been spoon-fed self-esteem cereal for the past 22 years,” he said. “They’ve been told it’s all about them — what they want, what they are passionate about, what they find fulfilling. That’s not a bad message, but it’s also not a complete message.”
Pink’s new book is designed to fix that. The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is a career guide cum manga comic designed to appeal to the newest entrants to the workplace. During the illustrated tale, the title character learns six lessons that Generation Y workers might not have fully absorbed at home.
To Papp’s friend, Rule No. 3 might apply: It’s Not About You.
“Yes, work should be fulfilling, but there are different kinds of fulfillment,” Pink said. “There’s a deep sense of satisfaction that comes from serving someone else well — serving the customer well, giving a client something they didn’t know they needed.”
To Bryce-Buchanan’s daughter, there’s Rule No. 4: Persistence Trumps Talent.
“We need to return to stressing doggedness,” Pink said.
He has made a point to do that with his own children, who are 11, nine and five, so that they do not hit their first career bump and crumple.
“Now when they ask for help they say, ‘Yes I’ve already tried harder and yes, I’ve already tried a different way,’” he said.
And for my reader and her daughter, Rule No. 1: There Is No Plan.
“It’s nice to believe you can map out every step ahead of time and end up where you want,” Pink wrote in his book. “But that’s a fantasy. The world changes. Ten years from now, your job might be in India. Your industry might not even exist. And you’ll change, too. You might discover a hidden talent. Take a job because it will let you do interesting work in a cool place,” even if you “don’t know exactly where it will lead.”
What appears to be a complex contradiction, he said — that work can be glorious but grinding, worthwhile and wretched, a place you can’t wait to get to and can’t wait to leave, something you love but hate to do — is actually the simple truth, and therefore the best message we can give our children.
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