ABSTRACT
Parental involvement in children’s spiritual formation has changed significantly over the last five centuries. The Middle Ages substituted the priest for the pater familias; Luther challenged this, making the family the central socializing institution, spiritually grounded under an authoritative patriarch. Industrialization and urbanization separated work from home, leading to gendered spheres and an authoritarian patriarchy, with the mother responsible for children. Compulsory schooling and social welfare shifted authority toward the state, while war and National Socialism further undermined patriarchal authority, codified after World War II as parental authority. Egalitarianism, secularization, and demographic trends since the 1960s have increasingly dissolved parental authority, leading to an expressive individualism within a loose family structure. The Reformation vision of an authoritative father responsible to God for his children has been replaced by autonomous individualism under the authority of the state.
