this is a very worthy issue for the forum and I'd like to thank Alyss for presenting it.
I also read the above mentioned article in Wall Street Journal last night and it certainly threw me into depths of reflecetion on parenting styles and their outcomes.
There are certainly great advantages to the way the Chinese raise thier offsprings, how they manage them to reach real heights of achievements and if they hadn't China would not have been the country that it has become in just a very short span of time, one has to be truthful. The article also indicated how the Chinese cultivate an iron like confidence in their children that no power on earth can shake. This I've witnessed in my long years of associations with the Chinese. I've admired this very great quality, that no matter how life may treat one, one does not chicken out or give up. This is a very amazing quality that I very much even envey. The Chinese feel good about who they are and what they do, no matter what the circumstance and what goofs one has committed.
The western style of parenting, as the article indicated, of being scared of one's children and almost paranoid about certain subjects such as overeating and overweight, and allowing the child to choose his/her own path of learning and development; on the other hand may not provide the answers that humanity needs at this juncture in its history. It has been shown that children who are brought up with hardships grow healthier mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. If one has no idea about hardship, one can never appreciate comfort; and if one is always in comfort, it's totally taken for granted. Thus the generations get softer and softer and more comfort oriented and pleasure doctrine seekers, etc.....
Intuitively I feel there must be a fine balance between the two ways, a yin and Yang balance perhaps to keep everyone sane and our children guided. So many of them have no idea how fortunate they're and on the contrary feel they're oppressed if they can't play enough, etc. but when you tell them that 70% of the children of the world have no access to even primary schools, or 70% adults go to bed hungray and only 1% have the possibility of going to university, they really calm down and begin to think again.
Anyway a universal teacher said: "Children are the light of the world and at the same time its darkness!" The easiest thing in life is to bring a child into the world and the hardest to educate that being to be a human. I hope others contribute to this forum and we can keep it going! It's an important discourse!