Dear Miriam,

Our daughter is due to sit the Leaving Cert next year. She is a bright girl and has always done well at school. We hoped she might be interested in going into something like primary school teaching after her exams, but she has her heart set on becoming a make-up artist, if you don’t mind.

She is obsessed with all these girls on Snapchat and spends all her spare time trying out make-up techniques and posting pictures of herself on her own blog. I can see that she is talented at make-up and people seem to be interested in what she does, but I just think she is capable of achieving much more in life and should go on to university and get a proper degree and maybe even a masters for herself. Of course, she says that we should support her no matter what she wants to do in life, and that this is her dream.

But you only get one shot at the Leaving Cert and I don’t want her to have any regrets later in life.

What do you think, Miriam?

Concerned Mother

Dear Concerned Mother,

Thank you for your letter. I can see where the conflict exists between you and your daughter in terms of the route she should take after finishing school, and I understand that you have her best interests at heart, but first things first: the Leaving Cert.

If she is bright and has always performed well at school, I don’t see why that should change for her final year, just because you disagree about what she should do afterwards. So rather than fret about the future right now, I would say that the most important thing is to support and encourage her to do the best Leaving Cert she can so that she has a good range of options afterwards – whether she does decide to pursue a career in make-up or changes her mind completely.

Of course, I am not a careers’ guidance teacher, so I can’t talk about what the best option is for your daughter. What I can say is that I know of many make-up artists who are running very successful businesses. I recently met one young woman who had trained in various disciplines – from hair styling to Shellac nail application – and she was absolutely flying.

It’s a career that you can always travel with, you can work in spas, salons or on the road as a mobile operator, you can be your own boss, etc, so there are many advantages and opportunities from what I can see if you are willing to work hard and upskill constantly. Yes, perhaps it is not a “permanent, pensionable” job, as we know it; but what is these days anyway?

Again, you should consult a careers’ guidance teacher, so your daughter can look at third-level courses that she might be interested in pursuing as well as make-up – whether that is primary teaching or a degree that would be of benefit to her in the future as a make-up artist; for instance, a general business course if she wanted to run her own salon.

Your daughter could then defer her college place for a year and do an introduction course to make-up artistry to give her a taste of what is involved in the day-to-day job. She might find that she loves it; or that it’s not for her after all. Either way, she will have options.

So keep talking, explore all the various routes and I’m sure that your daughter will find her way to a rewarding career.

Best of luck.

A Reader Writes: “Horrified” Grandmother

Dear Miriam,

In reply to “I don’t want my mother-in-law to mind ‘my’ son.”

Surely it should be “our” son? Who would want a daughter-in-law who refers, publicly, to her mother-in-law in such terms?

The unfortunate husband, who is according to her “all right”, would understandably not want to cut out his mother who cared for and loves him.

A little less selfishness would not go astray and a realisation that the little boy has two parents and two grandmothers.

Horrified mother and grandmother CL