Another thing to have in mind is that in the contemporary culture, qualities such as "open-mindedness," "questioning authority," "free-thinking," etc. are universally hailed as ideals, to the point where implying that someone lacks such qualities is considered a serious insult, and is a frequently employed tactic for character assassination. Thus, people endeavor to obtain recognition from others that they have such qualities, and get angry when someone suggests otherwise.

However, like any human culture, ours also has its strong taboos and norms that it's unwise to question, let alone flaunt; to them the respectable label of "free-thinking" doesn't apply. So, what gets labeled as "free-thinking" in our culture may be the real thing, but it may also be a cargo-cult imitation thereof, whose real purpose is signaling respectability, not revealing truth, and where tacit agreement exists not to extend skepticism and criticism to truly sacred taboos. Humans being what they are, we would expect to get much more of the latter, and this is indeed what we see. Thus, I'm extremely skeptical of anyone trying to publicly extol his own, or even someone else's "free-thinking" as a virtue.

Moreover, in any society, including ours, it would be extremely unwise -- even if it were possible -- to raise your kids to be out-and-out fearless free-thinkers who will throw themselves against every third-rail taboo and sacred cow they come across. It would ruin their life prospects. The way things seem, however, it's impossible to have that much direct influence on your kids' character anyway, except to the extent that you can control the peer groups they socialize with -- which is another thing that makes me skeptical of the above quoted work.