Interwar experts saw parental authority declining across European families

Evidence

From the 251 completed questionnaires which were returned, it appeared, with regard to class-specific differences, merely `that rural peasant families represent a more extreme type of patriarchal family than working-class ones’. For the rest, the experts noted a general decrease in parental authority, or an increase in children’s independence, or both. Most of them thought the causes of this related to unemployment, the war, the use of leisure time, a decline in morality, and irreligion. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 560

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broad modernization/decline-of-patriarchy narratives in critical theory and to the moral-panic framing the reader already tracks elsewhere. — connects to: Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority; Fromm linked proletarian psychological progress to declining paternal authority — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 551; Decline of the family’s countersocial role made individuals more directly socialized by mass culture — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 416 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: These attributed causes (unemployment, war, leisure, morality, irreligion) contrast sharply with the Frankfurt School’s own later materialist account of authoritarian personality — worth chasing the divergence.

Broader Connections

• Fromm linked proletarian psychological progress to declining paternal authority #expands (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 551
• Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority #corroborates (0.80)
• Mass unemployment isolates families and weakens parental authority #corroborates (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 438
• Decline of the family’s countersocial role made individuals more directly socialized by mass culture #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 416