To what extent did your parents' professions influence the profession you chose?

I think this varies from family to family and person to person.
For me their professions played no influence on me, nor my other siblings.
They only supported each of us in following what made each of us intrigued in and happy to do.

It didn’t influence me and it didn’t influence two of my three siblings.

The closest it got to influencing a child was that my brother ended up working for the same multinational. But our father was an engineer, and my brother was a Human Resources specialist.

My sister, my younger brother, and I all ended up in completely unrelated fields. My mother was a Librarian but the closest to that was when I worked in the library while in high school.

My mom’s profession did have some influence on the path I’ve chosen. She was not employed while I was growing up, but she had previously been an elementary school teacher and while I was in school, she was always heavily involved in the school and PTA. That did inspire me to go into education, even if I intend to teach at the collegiate level.

My dad was a venture capitalist (now retired). I can’t say that line of work interested me much. I never found finance to be interesting, even if I knew one could make a lot of money in it. I love my dad, nothing against him or his profession, but it was pretty clear early on that his line of work wasn’t going to be for me.

Zero

Probably, I am in management long-term like my bio dad.

None whatsoever.

Not at all, but I might have been better off if I had worked for the government like my parents.

My mom began in her teens working in radio & tv commercials, then moved on to her “real job” as high school teacher. My dad served in the military, then law enforcement for over 30 years.

I’ve been a so-so student, almost felon, and constantly juggle careers. Their good examples haven’t made a difference yet, but at least they don’t hold a grudge.

My mom got me interested in psychology by watching educational tv together. My dad got me uninterested in accounting, from swearing at the calculator.

My dad was an engineer and a pilot. Both of my sisters got their pilot license. I’m pretty risk-adversive and not the biggest fan of heights.

My mom was a teacher. While not an actual teacher, several of my jobs were working with kids. But I’d say that’s probably more influence of her parenting than her profession. By the time they had me (fourth child), she was no longer working as a teacher.

But as the saying goes, you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher. :)

Though my maternal grandfather was an architect. Both parents are pretty creative (dad used to paint, mom was an art major). All of my siblings and I have artistic or creative leanings.

My dad worked in aviation. He was on an aircraft carrier in the navy, so it was a natural step for him. I developed a fascination with aircraft, but nothing professionally.

Mom worked in customer service at MIT. First, at the MIT Press, their publishing division. They would leave out (slightly damaged) copies of their books for employees to take.

My mother brought home books on architecture, fine art, design – stuff that was way over my head at age 10–11, but I would read through them endlessly since I was home alone a lot.

Definitely imprinted on me as I later studied and worked in architecture, art, and design.

Your parents influenced your professions way more than you think. Dad was an engineer, none were surprised when I became one too. I never thought it would have happened like that, I was primed to be a geologist or a musician. As I got older my opportunity, skills and interests converged on engineering. Dad showed me the roadmap to get there and had he not done that I may have gone down a different path. He knew it was for me, I remember how he would take great interest in anything I would build and let me take basically anything apart. My siblings are all musicians and I see them heavily steering their kids into music.

Quite a lot, I’d say. I come from a family of teachers and preachers on both sides. Mostly college teachers. I expected to teach English too, but when I graduated from college, the market was glutted. I took what I could get: office work—just as small office computers were coming in. That led me to a new field without changing jobs.

In truth I was a bit relieved not to have to stand in front of a classroom. I do not like being the center of attention.

Meanwhile, I did volunteer editing jobs as an avocation—small newsletters for organizations I belonged to—and eventualy translated that skill into a full-time career as an editor, thus using my degree and also becoming an educator.

Later on, my computer programming experience stood by me when I got hired as a technical editor. That would have pleased my grandfather the scientist.

None of my siblings chose an academic path, so I guess as the eldest I was the only one who stayed close to the family business.

My dad was a Chem major so has always been STEM-ish (whenever he was actually around), so I got STEM-ish and got into Engineering. For educational purposes, I got STEM-ish with my 2 daughters. They then got into STEM majors in college. The older one just graduated last weekend with a Design/Mech Engr degree.