Parental aspirations are a powerful influence on educational achievement. They must also have some effect on what kinds of job young people want to do, though I'm not sure what the research shows on this. We do know from Ingrid Schoon's analysis of cohort data that girls' aspirations are higher than boys, at all levels of socio-economic status. (Schoon also shows that for the generation born in 1970 the class gap in aspirations is wider than is was for those born 12 years earlier; once again we have trends in gender and class pointing in different directions.) I have been looking generally for passages from literature whic illustrate the Paula…