Growing (up) Apart? Childhood Family Structure and Partisanship in Young Adulthood

Lena Wagner , Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Parental separation has become increasingly common in contemporary societies, yet its implications for political socialisation remain poorly understood. This study examines how parental separation in childhood relates to the development of political party identification in young adulthood. Drawing on longitudinal data on mother-child dyads from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2000-2023), logistic mixed-effects growth models are estimated to capture emerging party identification between ages 18 to 25 (N = 2,746 individuals). The results indicate that mother-child transmission of partisanship and maternal education strongly predict identification, whereas parental separation modestly reduces it. However, effects are largely confined to predicting initial levels at 18 but not age-related change, pointing to early and persistent stratification. Crucially, parental separation substantially obstructs intergenerational transmission of partisanship, particularly when it occurs in early childhood. By contrast, separation has little additional impact on the low likelihood of party identification in children of apartisan mothers.

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 Presented in Session P3. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 3