O tutti o nessuno? Differenze regionali e di genere nella partecipazione politica e sociale intrafamigliare in Italia

Although family ties are very important to understand political socialization,few studies have focused on the transmission of political and social participationfrom parents to children. By using the “Indagine Multiscopo - Aspetti della vi-ta quotidiana” (Istat), this article investigates the association between parents andchildren’s political and social participation, with particular attention to gender andregional differences. Multilevel models indicate, first of all, the presence of regionaldifferences in the levels of participation and, secondly, a strong tendency of intra-familiar political and social co-participation. In other words, sons and daughtershave higher probabilities of being politically and socially active when both parentsare active as well, regardless of their region of residence. Moreover, analyzing thechildren’s behavior compared to their mothers and fathers’ separately we find thatmothers’ participation has a stronger effect than fathers’. This difference in the ef-fect of parents’ participation is indeed small, yet geographically homogeneous. Putdifferently, having a politically and socially active mother increases the probabilityof children’s participation more than having a politically and socially active father inall Italian regions. This result is particularly interesting in the Italian context wheremothers are largely absent in the public sphere while they play a very importantrole within households.