Parents – understood as agent and societal institution – take on a crucial role when it comes to shaping the educational transition and vocational orientation of young people; they are addressed as a relevant reference factor in various studies. Puhlmann (2014, p. 147) asks poignantly how the parental role in the transition from school to work can be described - “Fate? Disruptive factor? Supporter?” - and thus points to their ambivalent position. However, it is still challenging to fully understand and analyse this ambivalent position in all its complexity. In quantitative studies, the position of parents is seen as an influencing factor on the vocational orientation of their children, so that data is collected on the educational level and occupational status of parents, on the basis of which relations are established between vocational orientation processes and the (educational) decisions of young people (Eberhard et al., 2013). A closer look at the relationship dynamics and patterns is taken in qualitative studies by also considering parents' perspectives (Calmbach & Schleer, 2020; Fasching & Felbermayr, 2024; Siegert, 2022). Küllchen (1997) recognizes a mixed form consisting of the poles of “support” and “obstruction or lack of parental support”. Parents behave in a “supportive and obstructive manner at the same time” (Küllchen, 1997, pp. 129-130). We understand parental behaviour not as individual characteristics, but always against the background of social inequalities and thus in the context of different opportunities that are available to them (Chamakalayil et al., 2020). We use the term and life phase transitions in the sense of the heuristics of “doing transitions” (Stauber, Walther & Settersten, 2022). This concept “emphasizes that transitions are constituted within and through different types of social relationships and different modes and degrees of institutionalization. Consequently, transitions are not individual but relational” (ibid., p. 5-6). This way, different actors involved in the production of transitions can be considered.

The contributions to the symposium address the overall question of the importance of parents and focus on individual aspects: The first contribution focuses on the normative interconnectedness and social and scientific situatedness of research into the influence of “parenthood” in the context of vocational orientation. The second contribution looks at the social class background and the role of parents in the transition process to tertiary education. Qualitative data is analyzed which shows the dichotomy of parental support, but also pull-out effects. Further insights of how to include working-class parents in the higher education experience of their children are presented. The third contribution uses discourse analysis to examine practical handbooks on parental work in the context of school-to-work-transitions. It becomes clear that the central concept of parental work remains vague and that parents themselves are designed as a target group for educational work.

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