To us, at that time, they might as well have been gods. We learned at a very early age that if we did things they liked we would receive acceptance. When we were accepted, we received more pleasurable things. When we did things they didn't like, we would get rejection. When we were rejected, we lost the pleasurable things and sometimes received pain in various forms.
Rejection equals pain and threatens survival.
In most of us, that program is still running. Since we didn't have the communication skills at that time to work out some sort of an agreement on how to act, we tried to come up with different ways to keep being accepted so we could keep getting the goodies. The problem is that the rules seemed to change from day to day. We know that those authority figures were all knowing and all powerful and that they couldn't be wrong. If we were raised under any sort of religion we were given another set of programs.