Neither of my parents followed their fathers into business. My paternal grandfather owned a printing/lithography company and my mom's dad was a general contractor. My great-grandfathers were a Presbyterian minister in Wales and a fisherman in Italy.
As a child, I didn't really know what my dad did except that he worked in a lab with a lot of radiation warning signs and brought home mice every week to feed his pet python. If anyone asked me, I would say "scientist" with a bit of a vague question mark. (In reality it was the
Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory which, whoa. So much environmental contamination.)
Dad spent four years in the Air Force and continued as a reserve into his 50s. I took the AF entrance exam when I graduated from high school, absolutely influenced towards that branch because of him. I changed my mind about joining, though.
My mother worked for a while as a secretary and insisted that my sister and I take typing and stenography classes in high school because "it's a dependable skill." We both have had clerical jobs at various points.