Abstract

Low levels of youth engagement in civic life have been the subject of extensive research and debate, with authors expressing concerns about the effects of this phenomenon on the quality of contemporary democratic systems. Some studies suggest that youth engagement varies significantly with youth’s social background and family socialization. This article addresses the relationship between youth engagement in distinct spheres of civic activity and youth’s social class background, parental school instruction, and family socialization. The study included a sample of 427 college undergraduates who responded to a survey. The data were analyzed statistically via multilevel modeling. Findings showed no relationship between social class and students’ civic engagement. By contrast, students with more educated parents engaged more in non-political civic activities and, in conventional political activities and non-political community engagement, engaged students reported the influence of their family more frequently than their disengaged peers. The article discusses possible reasons for the differential effects of social class, parental education, and family socialization on undergraduates’ civic engagement and introduces Lareau’s ([1989] 2000, 2002) concept of “concerted cultivation” to emphasize the distinction between communitarian and recreational types of engagement.