The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parental attitudes and occupational preferences of adolescents according to A. Roe’s theory. It was hypothesized that there is a close correlation between the emotional aspect of parental attitudes and the shaping of job preferences in adolescents directed to people or to things. A significant relation between parent’s and child’s gender was also predicted. The research was conducted in 2012 and 2013, and it included a total of 314 individuals – students of the last year of high school and technical school, as well as first-year students of Tricity’s public and private universities, both women and men. Two psychometric tools were used: A Parent-Child Relation Questionnaire by A. Roe and M. Siegelman (translated by W.S. Kowalski) and A Multidimensional Preferences Questionnaire by A. Matczak, A. Jaworowski, A. Ciechanowicz, E. Zalewska and J. Stańcza, which measured professional interests. On the basis of the results, it can be assumed that parental attitudes together with the quality of emotional relations between parents and children are closely connected to specific professional preferences which, at the same time, differ depending on child’s and parent’s gender.
