This paper explores how parents’ business ownership, parenting styles, socioeconomic status, and adolescents’ social identities affect subsequent adolescent entrepreneurship as measured by adolescents' choices to pursue entrepreneurship. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), we find that business ownership matters – children of parents who are not business owners are less likely to pursue entrepreneurship. Yet, adolescents from wealthier families in which parents did not own businesses were likelier to choose entrepreneurship than those with less wealth. We show that parenting styles, ownership, and socioeconomic characteristics affect adolescent entrepreneurship differently, indicating that there is no best parental profile to influence adolescents’ subsequent entrepreneurship across all socioeconomic situations and social identities.
