With the release of the Star Wars prequels, some fans complained about the unflattering portrayal of the Jedi. They no longer seemed like the honorable knights hinted at in the original trilogy, as they were more focused on politics and sticking to their strict rules. But this was what director George Lucas was going for, as he wanted to show the downfall of the Jedi Order and that it perished not only because of Palpatine but because they had lost their way. In fact, Lucas went so far with this idea that he turned the Jedi Order into a cult.
On the surface, there's no doubt that the Jedi are heroes fighting for a noble cause. Even as they lost their peacekeeper persona during the Clone Wars, they still held strict rules of protecting the innocent and doing whatever they could to secure peace in the galaxy. But still, many of their practices were morally questionable, and the vast majority of Jedi had little say in how they lived.
Using their sacred holocrons, the Jedi knew the name of every Force-sensitive child in the galaxy. They would then visit the parents and offer to take the child into their order, with the harsh penalty of never seeing them again. While the Jedi never took children by force, they preached that the infant could only reach their full potential by joining, and so many begrudgingly got handed over by choice.
Of course, this determines the child's entire life before they have any say in the matter. And while the temple offered a school with basic teachings, the students were fed Jedi ideologies from the beginning, meaning they had to live a selfless life free of attachments from early on. Then upon reaching the age of four, Jedi younglings got taught to wield lightsabers and essentially trained as soldiers during the Clone Wars.
There are surely instances where a child was saved and given a better life by joining the Jedi, but once they were in, they were in for life. Out of the thousands of years the Order had been around, only 20 Jedi Masters have ever left, and not many Knights likely took their leave, either. And while this may seem like an impressive number, it only hints at how difficult it was to leave. The Jedi never forced people to stay, but because they grew up at the temple, most members were scared of leaving everything behind and lacked the skills to integrate into society.
While the Jedi Order isn't evil, it's not hard to see the parallels it shares with a cult. The methods were already questionable enough, and the Clone Wars only worsened things, with Jedi as young as 16 years old being placed in charge of Clones and made to command battles. And because of all this, it's not surprising that Anakin turned to the dark side, as he got taken away from his mother and was never given the tools to be on his own.