ABSTRACT
Family is widely regarded as one of the most important influences on child career development. From an early age, children begin to construct career identities based on their experiences of the world around them, many of which occur in family contexts. Families are hierarchically organised social systems consisting of smaller subsystems such as the parental and sibling subsystems (Cox & Paley, 1997). Family systems interact with other social systems such as schools and workplaces and exist within larger systems (e.g., the environmentalsocietal system; Patton & McMahon, 2014) from which influences such as socioeconomic status, geographical location, and political decisions inevitably impact them and, in turn, the career development of children. Children are embedded in family systems and their career development may be best understood with reference to the family context in which they live (Whiston & Keller, 2004).
