Although previous research consistently finds a strong relationship between parent and child voting, the role of parent encouragement, or verbal instruction, remains less clear. In addition, few studies in this area have attempted to determine the causal mechanisms which drive this association. This study models a potential outcomes approach to causality and investigates the causal relationship between parent encouragement to vote and young adult turnout and informed voting behaviors. Results indicate that, after conditioning on factors that determine selection into treatment, parent encouragement leads to an increase of 30% in likelihood of voting and increases scores on a 6-point informed voting index by 1.04. This demonstrates the large role that parents play in determining youth engagement, while beginning to develop a more complete causal framework for how and why young people come to be active participants in public life.