While rebuilding my house, I’ve hired a few contractors. The ones who were working at the same time on Thursday were two father and son teams.
I spent some time thinking about how I at those ages never really wanted to do what my dad did. It was manual, hands on stuff that didn’t have any flair and didn’t hold my interest.
I could have been young and naive.
But I also could have just not had a super good relationship with my dad and working alongside him never appealed.
But as these father son duos worked on my house (and I spent a little time with each), I saw the value of (1) spending time learning a trade, (2) having an apprenticeship-type model for the trades (although, let’s be honest, it probably doesn’t take an electrician 8,000 hours to become competent, especially if he was already quick to learn to begin with), and (3) working along side your dad.
It’s worth noting in most twch-bssed business settings, it is impossible to have a child work alongside you, and be anywhere close to useful.
This has both to do with the skills required, and the general privacy concerns of a digital company.
But I can see why “take your child to work” days were actually somewhat valuable in the past.
Although “take your child to work” days may have been instituted as an insidious way to prepare the child to work for the local town’s main company. Kind of like how McDonald’s (whose burger-related foods are actually disgusting) panders to children TV networks for advertising to hook them early.
But watching the pairs (at different ages and stages of the sons’ professional capacity) was insightful, and makes me want to encourage a child to dive in and work with their hands.