Higher Parental Socioeconomic Status Accelerates Sexual Debut in Italy

The onset of the transition to adulthood starts with first sexual experiences. In this paper we analyzed how Italian university students’ timing and type (protected or unprotected) of sexual debut are influenced by parental socioeconomic status. By applying event-history techniques to unique data from the two releases of the Sexual and Emotional Life of Youths survey (2000 and 2017), we found a clear accelerating effect of higher parental SES on the sexual debut of their children. These results hold controlling for Second Demographic Transition-related characteristics of the family of origin. Our results contradict the well-established, North American- and Anglo-Saxon-driven finding that children with higher parental SES postpone their sexual debut. We argue and prove that the overall positive effect of parental education on children’s risk of sexual debut in Italy is due to the limited diffusion of unprotected sexual relations during adolescence and young adulthood compared to North American and other Anglo-Saxon settings.