Routine Parenting

According to The Daily Mail mothers are returning to authoritarian parenting styles in response to the lax parenting of the 60s and 70s. Generalizations aside, when does having a routine for your children equal conservative parenting? Having loosely set times for eating and sleeping make parenting easier. It's the parents who take this to the extreme and cannot deviate from "the schedule" that make parenting seem more like a dictatorship than a democracy.