Individual-level predictors of young children’s aspirations

Abstract

Often young children already have some ideas about what they want to do in the future. Using data from a large UK cohort study, we investigated the individual determinants of seven-year-old children’s aspirations, controlling for parental socio-economic background and parental involvement in learning. At age 7, not all children’s aspirations were unrealistic (55.6% of children aspired to common occupations), few (1.2%) were fantasy, but most were gender-typical. White children had lower occupational aspirations and were more likely to have uncertain future orientations than other ethnic groups. The antecedents of fantasy aspirations, more typical of younger children, were difficult temperament and low school engagement. Uncertain aspirations were related to higher cognitive ability but also to lower school engagement. Higher occupational aspirations were directly related to higher family socio-economic status, and higher occupational and more intrinsic aspirations were associated with more school engagement (in turn, higher in girls and ethnic minority children). Boys, compared to girls, had lower, more extrinsic and more masculine aspirations, but were also more likely than girls to aspire to rare jobs and have fantasy or uncertain aspirations.