Anne Roe believed that environmental factors in early childhood are the MOST important vector determining career choice. She directed considerable attention to the developmental period of early childhood in career counseling.

Highlighting Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Roe's theory supposes that career choices match the level of needs those choices attempt to satisfy. As you'll remember, Maslow proposed that primary needs must be met before the higher order ones (like understanding, beauty, and self-actualization) can be effectively sought. With Maslow in mind, Roe's system stresses the influence of child-rearing on later career paths and presents three basic kinds of causes and effects:

1. Emotional concentration on the child - more often than not, children with overprotective and overdemanding parents have their lowest order physiological and safety needs met as a matter of course, but at the expense of needs for belonging, love, and self-esteem. These, then, would be conditions sought in adult occupations.

2. Avoidance of the child - when children's physiological and emotional needs are neglected, they're likely to grow up seeking occupations of material acquisition and solitary pursuit.

3. Acceptance of the child - children accepted as an important part of a family that shares and discusses decisions and responsibilities find many or most of their needs fulfilled, and will probably seek careers that will satisfy the highest order needs.

Roe's approach also supposes that all of the above are influenced by genetic endowment. Attitudes, interests, and economic and social conditions can be trumped by high cards won in the cosmic draw, but the holder has to know how when to hold them and when best to cash in his chips. A "fields and levels" diagram (matrix or, more often, concentric circles) outlines Roe's approach and shows how interests and occupational types (fields) combine with varying levels of responsibility, skill, and ability. Possible occupations and careers can be fit in accordingly. The eight fields are:

1. Service
2. Business Contact
3. Organizations
4. Technology
5. Outdoor
6. Science
7. General Culture
8. Arts and Entertainment

Corresponding levels are:

1. Professional, Managerial, and Higher
2. Semiprofessional and Small Business
3. Skilled
4. Semiskilled
5. Unskilled