The View | Poor, young and lacking a father’s influence: how teenagers struggle with career choices in Hong Kong

A stable, nourishing family is an important bedrock for a child’s future achievement in life. Numerous studies have shown how the family environment is key to a young child’s future schooling achievements, earned income, mental health and many other measures. A lot of the focus has been on early childhood. But parental involvement is also critical for teenagers.

Teenagers learn from their parents. The mother’s role is particularly important for human capital development. A mother’s education level is a far more significant indicator of future success than a father’s. But fathers have an important role to play in career opportunities, where they often act as role models for their children. This is confirmed in numerous studies on the propensity for children, especially sons, to follow in their fathers’ footsteps in career choice.

In a changing economic world, fathers are also likely to provide better advice on job market opportunities than mothers, as they are usually better networked in the workplace.

Yet many young people lack the opportunities to learn from their parents. According to the 2016 Hong Kong population census, 4.1 per cent of 12- to 18-year-olds did not live with their parents and 18.3 per cent lived in single-parent households. Some 17.5 per cent of 12- to 18-year-olds did not live with their fathers, while another 2.1 per cent lived with fathers who had arrived from mainland China only within the past 10 years and were likely to be less familiar with local career opportunities.

In a globalised world with disruptive technological shocks and shifts in the geographic location of jobs, even teenagers living with parents are having a hard time identifying appropriate career opportunities. Those teenagers who do not live with their fathers are further disadvantaged. Furthermore, they are overwhelmingly from low-income, single-parent families.