In her father's footsteps

Dave and Whitney Lark at Whenuapai. Picture / Paul Estcourt

The father-daughter relationship is a special one. From the moment she's born there's no man in the world more important to a baby girl.

"Going to work with daddy" - whether to an office block or a building site - is high on the list of things girls like to do as a special treat.

This seemingly benign event can have far-reaching consequences. Some daughters choose to pay their father the ultimate compliment by adopting his career. They may have all started life as daddy's little girl but through their job choices they've proved themselves independent.

Fathers do not automatically want their daughters to follow in their footsteps. Of the women and their fathers who are the subjects of this article, one father encouraged his daughter to adopt the same career, one dropped hints it might be a good idea, another remained neutral, and one tried - unsuccessfully - to discourage his daughter from entering his vocation.

Taumarunui plumber Julie Stephens was a child when she began her informal apprenticeship, spending weekends and school holidays out on jobs with her father, Paul. As young as 12, she would lay out PVC pipes for him to glue and bury.

"I really enjoyed it so I just kept going," she says.

When she completed her official apprenticeship, Julie graduated with two honours: she came top of her class at trade school and won an award for being the best-looking plumber. "That was a bit of a set-up," says her father. "She was the only female in the class."

Being a woman in a man's industry can be a bonus.

"She usually gets a much better rapport with customers," says Paul, director of Taumarunui Plumbing, the firm that employs his daughter.

According to Julie, "the lady of the house" is often thrilled to discover the plumber is a 22-year-old woman. But she's lost count of the times people have asked if she's a "real" plumber.

Lifting fireplaces is a two-person job that Julie finds physically tough, but her father made a special tool that alleviates some of the strain.

She frequently asks him for advice, often just to confirm her own take on a problem. In turn, as the only qualified gas-fitter in town, Julie can teach Paul a thing or two in that area.

"We're really proud of her; she does a good job," he says.

Whitney Lark wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she left school so her father, Dave Lark, an Air Ordnanceman based at Whenuapai, "sort of hinted that maybe the Air Force or the military would be good".

Whitney agreed and got her recruiting papers without even telling her father. It seemed an obvious choice.

"I pretty much grew up around the Air Force so it's all I knew," she says.

But her first week of the three-month training course at Woodbourne, near Blenheim, was a shock to her system. "I didn't know what to expect," she says. "You're constantly worked on as soon as you get up until you go to sleep."

Dave, who completed the same course in 1980, sympathises with her.

"They take you from living with mummy and daddy and straight to having these corporals yell and scream at you. It's a big change."

Whitney, 18, is in logistics supply. Her job involves providing technicians with the parts they need to work on the Hercules and Boeings.

Dave has diverse duties on the Orions, including responsibility for weapons, photography, customs, immigration and cooking.

As a Master Aircrew (the highest non-commissioned rank), he is often privy to classified information he's unable to share with his daughter, who is at the bottom of the military's strict pecking order. Whitney is content to have connections in high places. Her surname is recognised around the base, and dad brings home presents from sorties overseas.

After graduating from Otago University with a degree in physical education and an LLB, Angela Stafford could have gone in either direction. She nearly became a sports agent after seeing the movie Jerry Maguire, but her father's job ended up inspiring her more than Tom Cruise.

Yet Barry Stafford, of law firm Stafford Klaassen, took care not to directly influence his daughter one way or the other.

"Angela just made her own decision," he says. Anything she's happy doing would have been fine with him.

Angela, 25, is in her second year as an intellectual property lawyer with Simpson Grierson, the Auckland firm where Barry used to practise.

Drinking coke dispensed by the vending machine was the highlight of Angela's childhood visits to the office with her father, and once she qualified she had no trouble deciding which law firm she wanted to work in.

"I'd always had a fondness for Simpson Grierson anyway, because they'd given me Barbie dolls at the Christmas parties."

But it wasn't just the dolls and fizzy drinks that enticed Angela into the law; her father's example had something to do with it.

"I always liked the way people seemed to respect dad so much and really value his advice," she says. And he certainly came in handy while she was studying and clarified many a legal issue for her on lengthy telephone calls from Dunedin.

"There's probably some benefit in having a father in the legal profession," says Angela.

"People make more of an effort to know who you are or they know who you are by association."

And being introduced to people as "Barry Stafford's daughter" is just fine by her. "I think some people might say, 'I just want to be me' but I'm so proud of being his daughter."

He's in Otaki; she's in Auckland. He's a sole practitioner; she's with New Zealand's largest architecture firm. He designs residential properties; she designs offices.

His rule is "no developers"; her main clients are developers.

So do father and daughter architects Dave and Nikki Launder have anything in common other than their career choice?

Yes, they're both headstrong, each quite capable of proceeding on their own trajectory without being influenced by the other's opposing view.

Nikki took up architecture despite her father's advice, while Dave built his own award-winning home in Otaki without reacting to Nikki's critique of his design. He acknowledges the validity of her comments but believes that staying true to his original vision was the right decision.

Dave tried to dissuade Nikki from following in his footsteps. He warned her that architecture was a lot of work for little reward.

"Architecture's pretty hard to make money in - if you care about what you do, if you want to build good buildings," he says.

Undaunted by her father's words and attracted to the mix of science and art, she enrolled in a B.Arch at Victoria University. "Maybe it only happened because I said, 'Don't do it'," muses Dave.

Nikki believes that growing up in an architecturally designed Wellington house (one of Dave's brightly coloured, geometric 1970s designs) and being surrounded by her father's architect friends were her main influences.

Dave is now more than happy that his daughter is a senior associate with Jasmax.

"I think she's doing it the right way, starting with a big corporate where she's part of a design team."