The relationship between political beliefs and child rearing practices

This research paper will try to determine if there is a significant relationship between a person's political beliefs and his beliefs about child rearing practices. Particularly, is there a correlation between political conservatism and parental strictness?Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford were able to show in 1950 that a certain personality type -- an authoritarian personality -- exists. The authoritarian personality believes in conventional values, and is aggressive, punitive, ethnocentric, and politically and economically conservative. These attitudes and characteristics tend to be associated very closely with one another.Because a person's political beliefs often show a great deal about certain other facets of his life, perhaps they also tell something about how he treats his children. If an individual believes strongly that the world should be a certain way, he will probably try to raise his children to fit into this type of environment.It would be truly valuable if we could establish that political beliefs are significantly correlated with certain types of child rearing practices. This would indicate that a parent's beliefs about child rearing reflect his entire lifestyle. It would show that in order to improve child raising practices, entire lifestyles would have to change.