Current interest about the preparedness of American workers has sparked widespread discussions. Schools and families are two of the targets of the heated debates. This attention flows from broad public concerns about the quality of students' education, declining economic fortunes of both young and old, perceived deterioration in family life, and lagging U.S. economic competitiveness in world markets (Berryman & Bailey, 1992; Brustein & Mahler, 1994; Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990; Grissmer, Kirby, Berends, & Williamson, 1994; Kazis, 1993; Kerr, 1994; The William T. Grant Foundation, 1988). The goal of this study is to inspire and inform the conversations about work readiness by improving understanding of the complex relationships among individuals, their families, their learning, and their preparation to enter the world of work.
The transition from school to further occupational or educational roles is far from smooth for a large portion of the American population (Kazis, 1993). Too many young persons (perhaps half or more of high school graduates) flounder in unemployment, less than living-wage jobs, or ill-fitting college programs. Many adults lack the ability to improve employability skills or find more personally meaningful career directions, once initial occupational choices have been made (Herr & Cramer, 1992; The William T. Grant Foundation, 1988).
Yet, such transitions seem easier for some individuals than others. There are many examples of young people who know their career goals, who have realistically assessed both their personal abilities and the labor market projections, and who are ready to move smoothly from education to their chosen occupations. There are also adults who have successfully returned to school and are now pursuing new career goals. For every case of a clear career path, there are contrasting examples, such as the high school senior with vague or nonexistent occupational goals and plans, and the adult who is unable to chart a satisfying course for education and/or career. An intriguing question is, what accounts for these differences in ability to make successful school-to-work transitions?
The answer to the question is complex and embedded in an understanding of the relationships between many individual and societal characteristics. Use of the ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) provides a framework to understand how individuals develop as a direct consequence of the interactions that take place between them and their surrounding environments. For both young persons and adults, the family is widely regarded as the primary and most powerful influence on human development (Olson & Hanson, 1990). The dreams of parents for their children, the structures families build, the way they handle conflict and communication, and the feelings of parents toward work and learning may have powerful effects on the development of skills and attitudes necessary to succeed. Schools, religious institutions, neighborhoods, and the business community are other components of the ecological system that have an effect on the family. All of these elements interact to contribute to an individual's potential for smooth transition to work.
Conventional wisdom suggests important links exist between families, effective schools, and the ability to enact adult life roles such as work. In a February 15, 1994, address at Georgetown University, for example, U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley spoke of how families are life's first teachers of lessons that are often never forgotten and that have profound social and economic consequences. Yet the role of this important "first teacher" has not been examined in much detail. Marshall and Tucker (1992) recently argued that "it will do the country little good . . . to restructure schools unless we make families better learning systems and include families as integral components of restructured schools" (p. 165).
Empirical evidence linking the family, and especially parental involvement in schooling, to academic achievement lends credibility to widely held public perceptions regarding the importance of ties between the family and educational efforts (Bempechat, 1990; Epstein, 1987; U.S. Department of Education, 1994). Surprisingly, though, relatively little research has been available to help examine the role families play in preparing individuals for work, either at particular points in time or throughout the lifespan (Entwisle, 1990; Gerstel & Gross, 1987; Way & Rossmann, 1994).
The need for information about family factors which may contribute to the school-to-work transition is particularly relevant today, given current attempts to implement the 1994 School to Work Opportunities Act and to fashion an appropriate sequel to the Carl Perkins Vocational Education and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990. Both policy initiatives emphasize improving the ability of individuals to make meaningful and efficient movements from school to work. Unfortunately, most recent education-for-work policy proposals have overlooked or given narrowly conceived attention to links between family and work.
Kazis' (1993) discussion of the "school-to-work problem" is typical of current literature. Although it outlines thoughtful strategies for improving career preparation and provides a number of important recommendations for federal policy, it fails to address the question of whether family matters or what role the family might play in school-to-work transition. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act does mention parents as important participants in children's education, but primarily in terms of career exploration and choice and as a possible representative partner in designing and administering educational programs (Brustein & Mahler, 1994).
Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the recently adopted national education goals, emphasize the enhancement of learners' capacity for productive employment and the stimulation of parental participation in the education of their children. No connection is made, however, between parents and education for work. The references to parents in this policy initiative are laudable, but the fact that the policy ignores the link between families and preparation for work is a concern.
There seem to be some erroneous assumptions about families regarding their career development involvement; for example, the beliefs that all parents have equal capacities to fully and effectively support their members' career exploration and choice, educational program planning, and homework completion; assertions that a family's primary contribution to preparation for work occurs before adulthood, and during the child's adolescence; feelings that preparation for work universally occurs at distinct stages of life, which conveniently coincide with secondary and/or postsecondary school; or thoughts that a parent's involvement in educational activities contributes more to a child's preparation for work than do other aspects of daily family dynamics. One final assumption is that occupational work roles and family work do not interact in meaningful ways.
With few exceptions, current school-to-work literature also ignores a number of major changes in American family forms and functions that have occurred over the past quarter century; for example, increases in the number of single-parent families and the entry of large numbers of married women with children into the labor force (DelCampo, 1994; Furstenberg, 1990; U.S. House of Representatives, 1987). The absence of more substantive policy-focused dialogue regarding associations between family, education, and transition-to-work appears to be a weak link in the process of designing current school-to-work opportunity initiatives.
In the interest of informing the present policy debate, as well as educational practice and research, this study addressed the following broad questions:
Before turning to a discussion of the study methodology and findings, it is appropriate to step back and ask why, given the conventional wisdom that links family to educational achievement and school success in general, hasn't more attention been given to the family in education-for-work proposals?
During the rise of industrialism, occupational work came to possess increasingly discrete and well-defined times and places. This direction served to conceptually disconnect occupational work from family work and also from the enactment of other key life roles such as the user of leisure or lifelong learner (Kliebard, 1990). Several scholars have argued that U.S. business has influenced educational practice and that both perpetuate the scientific management ideology of compartmentalizing roles, and that even in the face of evidence, this approach may no longer be functional (Bennett & LeCompte, 1990; Gray, 1993; Shedd & Bacharach, 1991; Wirth, 1992). A reasonable question is what is the extent to which school-to-work transition programs also reflect role compartmentalizations that are no longer functional and which separate the world of work from the world of family.
The use of a male experience standard, however, still characterizes many related policies and research (Noddings, 1992). For example, special educational programs have often been designed for teen mothers with little or no attention to the responsibilities of teen fathers (Bogenschneider, Young, Melli, & Fleming, 1993). Researchers have also traditionally asked different questions about work and family roles for males and females (Kline & Cowan, 1989). Most research about the effects of unemployment, for example, has focused on the effects of male unemployment on individuals and families. Little attention has been given to the effects of female unemployment on the family. On the contrary, there has been much interest in female employment and its effects on the family, particularly on the development of young children in the family.
Such approaches are not surprising given persistent social norms that support different degrees of permeability in work/family boundaries for men and women (Pleck, 1977). It is still much more acceptable (even desirable) in the United States for men to place occupational work ahead of family work--for example, to stay late at work or to travel on business--and for women to place family work ahead of occupational work--for example, staying home to care for sick children or other family members.
Because of the greater interdependence of work and family for women, these differences often put women in a no-win position, regardless of which decision they make. For a woman, choosing not to work or to work only part time in order to care for her children may put her at a disadvantage when a strong work history may be needed for later employment. On the other hand, working mothers are at risk, too. Recently, for example, several divorced and separated female parents have had child custody orders challenged or reversed when they relied on day care to permit them to work and/or attend school (Brecher, 1995). Although there are important differences in the ways men and women form their work commitments and enact their work roles (Kline & Cowan, 1989; Pittman & Orthner, 1989), these differences do not seem to be part of the current educational policy debate. Most policy, in fact, tends to reflect the male experience standard of greater separation of work and family roles.
Existing research and theory suggests that a number of characteristics of the family are particularly relevant to vocational development. These include the location of the family in the broader social context (for example, socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic background); the structural features of the family such as single or dual parenthood; and family processes such as transmission of family work values, planned parental career-related interventions, and family interaction style (Schulenberg et al., 1984).
Recent studies provide several insights. It has been shown that parents transmit occupational values such as values of conformity or autonomy in work to their children (Kohn, 1977). It has also been shown that a family's socioeconomic status affects the nature and extent of career exploration (Grotevant & Cooper, 1988; Hageman & Gladding, 1983), occupational aspirations and expectations (Harvey & Kerin, 1978; MacKay & Miller, 1982; Marini & Greenberger, 1978), and occupational status attainment (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Gansemer, 1977; Mortimer, 1974, 1976). Parents are now known to initiate a number of different kinds of intentional career-related interactions with their children (Young & Friesen, 1992). Day-to-day patterns of family functioning, such as decision-making styles and degrees of conflict and cohesion, have been shown to be related to the development of career maturity among adolescents (Penick & Jepsen, 1992). Enmeshment in one's family of origin--for example, feeling pressured to spend most of one's free time with one's family--has also been shown to be associated with career indecision among university students (Kinnier, Brigman, & Noble, 1990).
For adults, the potential impact of the family on vocational development is more complex. Recent research focusing on the relational contexts of development suggest that not only do individuals take with them through the lifespan the result of interaction in their family of origin, but they also subsequently add the influence of family structures they create (Grotevant & Cooper, 1985; Youniss & Smollar, 1985).
To date, however, much of the career development literature has been based on a "social mold" view of unilateral parent-to-child influence (Grotevant & Cooper, 1988; Hartup, 1978), rather than on a relational view of family interaction. In the social mold perspective, families are seen as supporting career development primarily through modeling appropriate career behaviors, providing enriching experiences for children, and supporting development of desirable work-related attitudes. In the relational view, the contexts of development are cast as transactional and reciprocal rather than unidirectional and are seen as providing "gateways or channels to an ever-widening range of experiences" (Hartup, 1986, p. 2), as opposed to specific guides for future behavior. Questions are being raised about the adequacy of the unidirectional model of family interaction for explaining the development of adult competence (Grotevant & Cooper, 1988). This model remains, however, in most current education for work policies and programs, as the dominant view of a family's role.
Another explanation for the limited inquiry concerning family involvement in adult work-related learning is that social scientists have historically been more interested in the effects of work and the workplace on adults and families than in the reciprocity of these relationships (Schulenberg et al., 1984). In an interesting qualitative study, however, Crouter (1984) found educational as well as psychological spillover from family to work among employees of a large manufacturing plant. Among the responses were explanations of how the family taught employees lessons that paid off on the job.
To address the questions of this research effort, a conceptual framework was developed that outlined causal relationships among the characteristics of individuals, characteristics of families, selected learning processes, and readiness for transition from school to work. The constructs in the model were operationalized and their relationships examined for both adolescent and adult learners using two similar data collection and analysis procedures.
Data for the study was gathered from two national samples of youth and adults in four states. A description of the respondents in the adolescent group is provided in the next two sections. Hypothesized models linking study constructs were tested using LISREL (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993) structural equation modeling and SPSS (Norusis, 1990) logistics regression routines. Follow-up interviews were conducted with a small number of respondents in the youth sample. Funds were not available in this study for follow-up interviews with the adult respondents; however, a separate study to talk with the adults is in progress. Study methods and findings are presented in the next few sections of the report.