h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

God, I felt sorry for that kid! He can't have been more than five or six, and his dad was giving him a seriously heavy lecture about how he'd need to straighten up and fly straight because he has to go to law school and become a barrister! I mean...jeez.

Unless his dad lightens up, that kid will be no barrister: he'll have a nervous breakdown before he's thirty and spend the rest of his life drinking turpentine outside the bus station.

sometimes parents say terrible things to children and put them under so much stress to make up for their own failed dreams and expectations

Why can't parents just talk normally to their kids? And anyway, conversations like that should never take place before the kid is 15 and definitely behind closed doors. But that was your point, really, wasn't it?

Even when the child is 15, there are limits as to how useful such a conversation would be... I know someone whose dad decided his career for him, so that he would be rich in future - he went to university, but disliked the subject so much, he couldn't do it and had to drop out... He found a different career path himself and is now doing well!

My dad must be a bit disappointed in me, as he was very driven and rose quickly to the top of his profession before retiring early, whereas I'm drifting about near the bottom of my profession because I'm not driven enough or something, but I'm happy to have a job that pays me enough to get by, and my dad is happy that I'm doing ok...

Must be difficult for parents, I don't know, but it seems to me that they are more likely to be happy with their children if they don't have fixed ideas of how their children should be!