I have been thinking about this lately, too. I just read "Hothouse Kids". It seems that the author felt that she was hothoused as a child and is trying to come to terms with that. I think she is saying that what matters is the manner in which the parent is invested in the child.

The problem is that no matter what the parent's feelings, reasoning or intent, the child may interpret the experience quite differently. I know from talking about this with my own parents that what I interpreted as pressure was not intended to be pressure.

As a child, I felt that my parents were trying to "fix" my flaws rather than accepting me. As a parent, I understand that they were trying to help me overcome issues that I struggled with. Did they do the "right" thing? I'm not sure there is a right thing.

I projected my own perfectionism onto them--easy for an analytical perfectionist to do. I almost think we can't win as parents. We can try to balance on the knife edge of perfection but we can't know what our children's experience of our parenting (or their interpretation of their experience after the fact!) will be.