Narrative Approach to Career Identity Development: Parental Influence in the Italian Context

Examining the impact of family on young peoples’ vocational identity is very important in cultural contexts of Mediterranean countries, where young adults tend to live with their parents for a prolonged time. In the Italian context, living with parents in their 20s and 30s is associated with a specific “delay syndrome” in the transition to adulthood that increases identity instability and hinders career plans. Starting from the historical background of vocational identity and delay syndrome in Italy, the chapter highlights the parental influence on Italian youth’s career development. Specifically, assuming that career construction is a co-constructed process in which parents can be interpreted as identity agents, the chapter presents and discusses the main results of research in the Italian context and proposes a descriptive model of vocational identity co-authoring between parents and young people