Obedience and Autonomy: Religion and Parental Values Reconsidered

A long research tradition examines the relationships between religion and parental values, defines broadly as the traits that adults find most desirable in children. Two such traits have been of particular interest: obedience and intellectual autonomy. The authors argue that contemporary Conservative Protestants are prone to endorse authoritarian parenting orientations disproportionately -that is, to value obedience at the expense of autonomy. In addition, they hypothesize that Catholics tend to embrace more authoritarian child-rearing values than do non-Conservative Protestants and other Americans