For the original post, one more response that occurred to me. I heard a woman on National Public Radio speaking this week about how her father always made all of the decisions for her and then once he passed, she set about making her own choices, redirecting and being able to pursue her own interests.

I also heard a brief report this week (but I don't remember the source, possibly also NPR) in which they were discussing how universities try to find children that the school wants in their starting class, but the child's home situation might be such that the student is not able to connect with such a university and schools are trying to work on that issue.

My point is just to add more discussion points about the role of parents. Thanks for the interesting post.