Is Science a Career Choice to Push on Children?

They say it's narcissistic to push your kids to follow in your footsteps, but when they say that, they must be talking about other people. After all, my footsteps, often covered with disposable clean-room booties, lead to science, which is a responsibly nerdy career choice. Or is it?

Credit: Hal Mayforth Nerdy, yes -- but how responsible is it to encourage a child to study arduously for decades to compete for a slot in an inadequate job market? The same parents who beam at their child's repertoire of AP science courses eventually stop bragging when the child's Ph.D. program enters its fifth, sixth, or eighth year. They become curiously quiet when their child, flush with advanced degrees, moves back into their basement and takes a job at Chili's. Success in science is hardly guaranteed -- a feature that makes science all the more intriguing to us but scarier as a choice for our children.

Adam Ruben, Experimental Error: Fetus Don't Fail Me Now (May 27, 2011)

• careers
• parenting
• science