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RESEARCH PRODUCT

¿Life coachers? Padres de alumnos y trabajo de apoyo a la construcción biográfica de los hijos

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The obligation to attend school for a longer period transformed schooling into a narrative pivot of youth biographies and an inescapable element of the individuation process. In Portugal, at the entrance to the secondary school, young adolescents are invited to formulate a career choice among a set of options offered by the educational institution. This choice, strongly anchored to the exercise of individual autonomy and ideally involving the individual in a life project, constitutes a true biographic challenge. Either because the «field of possibilities» depends largely on the academic value demonstrated throughout the school trajectory; either because the prevailing context of uncertainty generates perceptions of the inherent risk of each choice. To that extent, parental involvement in their children’s studies and vocational guidance constitutes an important support to cushion the anguish of choice. The encouragement and accompaniment given by parents is a true «life coaching» of the children’s biographic construction – although it also reveals a difficult and uncertain process that can expose the limits of the educational action of the parents. Based on empirical data composed by interviews with parents of young students attending secondary education, this article analyses schooling as a (new) bond of affiliation that links parents and children and deals with this new parental competence: active participation in the children’s school biography. Its aim is to examine specifically the challenges and ambivalences of parental support for children’s vocational choices in a context of uncertainty.