The timing of early vocational preferences was compared in a sample of young adolescents from former East Germany and from West Germany. Because of German unification in 1990, and the attendant massive sociocultural changes, such a sample offers a unique opportunity to examine the joint influence of development and context on key transitions and on the accomplishment of developmental tasks. Results suggested that, as the memory of the restrictive Communist system fades and as younger adolescents have had less exposure to it in the first place, differences between East and West tend to disappear. Separately, the present findings, obtained through the use of survival analysis, indicated that the formation of early vocational preferences among the 10- to 13-year-old respondents appeared to be associated with more advanced identity development. Moreover, these young adolescents appeared to be remarkably “tuned in” to the world of occupations, suggesting greater realism than might be predicted on the basis of conventional career development theory.
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