Then, many parents do not know work.  They do not understand the demands of the different professions.  Their point of view is narrowed by their own experiences, which have been, perhaps too harsh, perhaps too easy.  Many parents have a narrow, selfish, rather jealous feeling that their children cannot be any more intelligent than they are.  “The old farm was good enough for me; it is good enough for my son”; “the old business was good enough for me; it is good enough for my son.”  This is the attitude.  This is why many parents either refuse their children the advantages of an education and insist upon their going to work at an early age, or compel them to take a hated schooling.

On the other hand, there are parents who consider their children prodigies, geniuses, intended to occupy some great and magnificent position in the world.  Most frequently they hold their judgment entirely apart from any real talents on the part of the child.  Few human woes are more bitter than the disappointment and heartache of both parent and son when a young man who might have been a successful and happy farmer or merchant fails utterly as an artist or writer.

Parents often persuade their children to enter vocations upon the flimsiest possible pretexts.  Almost every child takes a pencil and tries to draw, yet there are many parents who spend thousands of dollars in trying to make great artists of children who have only the most mediocre artistic ability.  Mere purposeless drawing of faces and figures is an entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist.  The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability.  Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either talent or genius.

A parent’s judgment of the requirements of a profession is oftentimes most amusingly erroneous.  We remember a father who told us that he was quite certain that his son was born to be a ruler of men.  When we asked why, he told us in all seriousness that from early childhood his boy’s blood boiled with indignation against people who had committed indignities upon kings and princes.  Of course, in one sense of the word, this parent was insane, and yet his bad judgment was scarcely more ridiculous than that of many other parents.  We have met parents who seemed to think that success in the practice of law depended wholly upon the ability to make speeches.  We have seen other parents who thought that success in banking depended upon the ability to count money and hold on to it.  Even intelligent people have the false idea that an architect needs only to be a good draughtsman.  The number of people who imagine that success in business is won by shrewdness and sharp practice is very large.