Social Stratification and Career Choice Anxieties in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe

Abstract:Central Europe around 1900 was marred with anxiety around the choice of career. This article weaves histories of education, labor, bureaucracy, and the social sciences to show how families reacted to changes in the labor market, including the opening of careers to talent and the mechanization of handicrafts. Parents found themselves unable to guide their children to a safe profession. Whereas previously, career choices were limited, changes in education and the labor market offered adolescents more options. Simultaneously, however, some occupations became endangered and others overcrowded. The erosion of labor stratification gave families the hope of social mobility but also upended their ontological security, as traditional roads to adulthood became impossible to follow. This article uses the discourse on career choice to write a history of this crisis. The discourse was born in early modern Europe to stop parents from forcing their children into a profession against the children's wishes. In nineteenth-century Europe, however, parents and schools weaponized this discourse against each other to widen or narrow access to advanced education. Social scientists concerned with the industrial labor force joined the conversation by turning career choice into a matter of scientific expertise. Finally, the article shows how voluntary associations pioneered the provision of vocational guidance before state intervention after World War I. Thus, the article traces a significant transformation in the transition to adulthood and offers a prehistory of vocational guidance.