Following the family’s trade now the exception

CHILDREN are less likely to follow the same careers as their parents than in Victorian times, often deliberately choosing a different trade, according to new research.

Family history website Ancestry.co.uk said just 7 per cent of children ended up in the same job as their mother or father, compared with almost half in the 19th century. A decline in family trades was partly to blame, as well as a huge increase in the number of vocations.

Parents were also more likely to advise their children to pursue a different career today. 
Girls would have little choice but to follow in the footsteps of their mother in Victorian times, often taking up low paid manual work or going into domestic service, said the report.

Miriam Silverman of Ancestry.co.uk said: “In the 19th century, occupations were often dictated by social class. Children were much less likely to transcend the class they were born into, to secure either a better paid or more highly skilled job.

“From farmers to physicians, most of us will have at least one family trade within our own family tree.”