Career-o-gram
Whether or not you realize it, your educational and career aspirations are at least in some
part founded on the messages that you get from your family. These messages can be overt,
expectations that have been placed on you since birth, or they can be subtle or unconscious, even
unintentional. For instance, you may feel pressure to go to college because no one from your
family has ever gone and you feel obligated to repay your parents for their sacrifices made for
you or you may feel pressure to attend college because everyone from your family has always
gone and that’s just what someone from your family does. Similarly, you may want to sell
insurance because your mother has been providing for your family for years by doing that. On
the other hand, you may have already decided that you don’t want a job that will force you to
travel because you remember missing a parent badly when s/he was away. We also get messages
from family members about which types of jobs have value and which do not, and that may
depend on the culture our families come from, what gender we are, and the role work plays in the
family’s value system. All of these considerations have an impact, however subtle, on our
choice of career.
One way to see how this plays out is a Career-o-gram, which was developed by Bowen
(1978) as a means of visualizing the messages of family members and other important people in
our lives. Your task is to create a generational family tree, going at least as far back as your
grandparents and including other non-family members who may have had an influence on your
career perceptions today. For each person, note their highest education level, their career(s), and
your understanding of their experience. Once you have completed this activity, you will see how
you have reacted to what your family has experienced, either by following in their footsteps or
by heading in the opposite direction!
Example of setup:
Grandfather
Shauna
(godmother)
Jess’s
fiance
Uncle
Steve
Jess
Grandfather
Grandmother
Dad
Mom
ME!
Grandmother
Uncle
Henry
Keira
StepMom
Keira’s
friend