The accidental social worker

I grew up in Australia, in suburban Sydney, in the 1960s, the daughter of a dynamic woman who would have been a feminist (if she had been white and middle class) and of a man who would have been a church minister (if he had been white). As it was, my parents were of Chinese descent, from a line of families who had lived in Australia for several generations. Their parents had been rural small business owners, and, disappointingly for my parents, this is what they also became, despite valiant efforts to become more socially mobile. My mother constantly craved an education (she had to leave school in her third year of high school in order to housekeep for the family). My father, despite parental disapproval, studied for four years to become a church minister, yet was unable to gain employment as such. The suspicion was that Australia was not ready for a Chinese minister in that particular religion. There were therefore high hopes for my generation. University education was taken for granted, and, as is usual for Chinese families, professional education was preferred. I can remember the limited range of choices put to me by my parents at the time: social work or teaching. I wanted to be a teacher. My mother wanted me to be a social worker. To cut a long story short, I became a social worker.