I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times in the next week. :)

Study:

My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves.

For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished more than forcing me to do homework ever could have.

Religion:

I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true morality.

In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn't see through all the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy.

However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she's getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don't raise her within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path.

I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about telling them what to think.

As for media, I wouldn't dare put parental control on any form of media. Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if anything confuses/scares her.

Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in trouble, she might be scared to tell me.

Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied, or pressured into sexting. And, if she's afraid that I'll get mad because she broke the rules, I'll lose that.