What can I be when I grow up? Parental support and career exploration among teenagers: The moderating role of dispositional optimism

The present study aimed to broaden the knowledge about the personal and parental factors associated with teenagers' efforts to actively engage in the developmental task of vocational preparation. We investigated the associations between parental career-related behaviors (i.e., parental support, interference, and lack of engagement), adolescents' career exploration, and the moderating role of dispositional optimism. Our sample was formed by 441 Romanian teenagers (58 % males, M = 14.17, SD = 1.05). The results suggested that adolescents experiencing a low level of parental support reported a low level of career exploration, regardless of the level of dispositional optimism. Conversely, when the level of parental support was high, participants reported a higher level of career exploration when they also reported a high level of dispositional optimism. We discuss the importance of examining individual characteristics in conjunction with ecological factors related to adolescents' environments when understanding career exploration.