Exploring patterns of children’s cultural participation: parental cultural capitals and their transmission

Cultural participation during childhood significantly impacts an individual’s chances of future social mobility and well-being. Research to date has focused disproportionately on adults’ cultural practices, failing to comprehensively examine how children’s cultural participation is formed, structured and linked to their parents’. Drawing upon data from the Taking Part Survey, this article first examines the cultural profiles that emerge in children’s participation in England (including highbrow, eclectic, popular or restricted) and then employs regression techniques to disentangle the effects of parental capital (level of education versus cultural participation profile) on children’s cultural profiles. The analysis provides the greater granularity needed to understand the relative strength and significance of parentally embodied versus institutionalised cultural capital in children’s varying forms of engagement with arts and culture. While the patterns of intergenerational transmission revealed in the study largely confirm the role of institutionalised cultural capital in the reproduction of cultural inequality, they also reveal the significance of parental participation for children’s cultural participation. This highlights the need to approach cultural mobility and arts engagement policies at the household level rather than targeting children individually.