By Jenny Mullinder
Part of the My Future Career Series
I’ve always known that I grew up in a ‘difficult’ home environment. My Mum was taking care of her partner, who had cancer, for several years until he died. Not long afterwards she became ill herself, eventually being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. I was a young carer – looking after her and helping out by doing most of the tasks and chores at home. Alongside this I was being bullied in school and was quite depressed and anxious. I couldn’t talk to my Mum about any of this, never mind go to her when I wanted advice and support in looking ahead to my career.
In school you’re expected to have an idea of what you want to do when you grow up. GCSEs need to be picked to feed into the A-Levels, BTEC, or other further course you’re going to take, and that needs to lead onto a degree, apprenticeship, or job. Most 14 and 15 year olds don’t really know what they want to do, so it’s usual to talk with your family for help in choosing your subjects. Unfortunately, that option isn’t available to all young people for a variety of reasons. Some parents are out at work a lot to ensure they can pay the bills and provide for their family; some (like my Mum) are ill, disabled, or have substance misuse issues or mental health problems; and others may be unavailable for different reasons. Of course you can always talk to a teacher or mentor about your choices, but that’s not the only barrier when you don’t have a very ‘supportive’ family.
Growing up with a challenging home life meant I went into survival mode. I had to keep getting up, put one foot in front of the other, complete my coursework, do the grocery shopping, check in on my Mum often, and not totally fall apart. I managed it because I sort of skipped over a lot of things other teenagers were thinking about; like what I wanted to do in the future, what I was good at, or how to use my skills to move forward. Getting to the end of the week, and the end of school in general was challenge enough. Mentally I was storing up a lot of issues, anxieties, and thoughts that I’d have to unlearn later in order to succeed in life and a career.
I’ve often heard over the years the advice ‘Keep your personal life separate from your career, don’t let it interfere with work’. When you’ve got mental health issues resulting from your childhood it’s quite hard to leave them at the front door of the office though. In 2013, around 6 months after my Mum had passed away, I started an internship at a digital marketing and PR agency. It was a great job, the team were lovely, the work fun and challenging. But I wasn’t coping, and after a couple of months there I made the tough decision to leave, and take the summer off to recover before redoing my final year of uni.
When something life-changing happens at home it’s pretty difficult to separate it from your working life. I’m nowhere near as far into my career as I imagined and hoped I’d be by 24; I believe that’s largely down to issues with my family stopping me from reaching my full potential. Even when my Mum was ill, I was a lot less confident to go for the things I wanted, and had so many other worries and tasks that a job wasn’t exactly at the top of my list. After she died I was trying to deal with grief, feeling alone in the world, and not being able to sleep at night because I was terrified of dying. From what I can tell most work places don’t have a lot of support for employees around mental health issues or other things that may be affecting their work. Certainly for me in my internship I felt like the only viable option was to leave.
Every young person has a different family situation, and a different set of career dreams and ambitions, or lack of. Because we won’t all get the same support, encouragement, and advice when embarking on a career, I truly feel charities like Youth Employment UK are absolutely vital in helping young people take the first steps in their career. Nobody should be written off because of things beyond their control.
