“Strictness is a Virtue” – Social Determination of Authoritarian Parenting and Political Authoritarianism

Abstract

Parenting and children’s rights are intimately related. The parenting styles characterised by low responsiveness to children’s needs, including authoritarian-paternalistic and those of neglect, are harmful to child’s development and contradict the main principles of children’s rights. The slow development of children’s rights in Kazakhstan and, in general, in the Eurasian1 context, derives from the social norms justifying authoritarian-paternalistic parenting, specifically, the widespread belief that “strictness is a virtue”. This article proposes and discusses the concepts of “social determination of authoritarian parenting” and “social determination of political authoritarianism”. The former concept denotes an embodiment of social norms that shape the parenting styles with low responsiveness to children’s needs, especially authoritarian-paternalistic. The latter suggests that authoritarianism is a product of social and cultural contexts, including parenting. These concepts, being mutually supportive phenomena, create the vicious circle of the persistency of authoritarianism in both politics and in child-rearing.