My parents were divorced when I was young. One was a strict, tough, fair, and highly intelligent man who ran a farm after a hugely successful career in the military. The other was a lazy, extremely intelligent, hardworking (when she needed to be) autodidact. I spent time with both. I also spent a lot of self-directed time in sports ( which I paid for), scouts, and other pursuits.
The freedom under my mother allowed me to develop self-direction and to pursue my interests that have allowed me to find my spot in my adult life. My dad gave me the toughness and and discipline to buckle down and get unpleasant things done. Sports and other group activities gave me the willingness to do the blocking so someone else can make the touchdowns.
IMHO, based on this and my observations of other people, kids need strictness in order to develop discipline and need to learn how to do the dirty work, then they need increasing levels of autonomy to become individuals.
Amy Chua lives in a highly insulated world and thinks her brand of parenting is unique. It is not.
There are many subcultures in the USA where parents drive kids and whole families drive kids to excel. Most of these areas revolve around athletics. For instance, the Black community in the US dominates little league basketball. Most weekends in a lot of families revolve around tournaments. That is all these kids do. Another subculture is rodeo. In fact, there are hundreds of subcultures where parents push and push their kids.
For Chua, she thinks her subculture, Classical Music, is the only one in the world. LOL.
Ironically, I think her blindness to much of it is due to her very strict upbringing and lack of contact with the rest of the world.
Her serious book on diversity is very interesting and I agree with much of it. But she used the Soviet Union as an example of a high diversity society, which is embarrassing to most serious scholars of Communism and of the Soviet Union.
The inclusion of the USSR and her ignorance of US subcultures highlights a serious flaw in her ability to look for and synthesize information. And it may go back to how she was raised - she never had the free time to go and LOOK for stuff - just walk the stacks and pull books down at random - or just go to conferences on things she does not know anything about - developing her curiosity about the world and methods to sate it.
And this is the flaw in the rigorous upbringing approach. The child becomes very good a limited set of skills and can work well within a circumscribed area of knowledge, but the world does not work that way. Sooner or later they have to adjust.
