What The Wild Things Are

The very structured approach to child-raising works well for left-brained kids and to achieve left-brain type outcomes- like proficiency at math, engineering and playing (not writing) music.
That approach doesn't teach/cultivate leadership, creativity, and strategic thinking.

Einstein was right brained, did terribly in school, shunned structure- didn't turn out too badly.

The "permissive" approach may not breed the highest IQs or the finest technical experts, but it might breed self-reliance, resilience and entrepreneurship.

What's the breakdown by culture or style of upbringing for the world's top CEO's or inventors?

In the end you're better off raising your kids in the manner that best suits their characteristics- structure for left brainers, open spaces and encouragement for right brainers.

You make an interesting point. Another way of looking at it would be not necessarily in terms of different children, but instead in terms of different aspects of a child.

In other words, when we want to help a child learn math, or to play an instrument, or teach them determination and discipline, we might emphasize the more "Chinese" approach. Whereas when we want to foster relationship, creativity, and thinking "outside the box," we would allow for space to play and "Be."

But I agree, too, that we need to be sensitive to an approach that works for a particular child. That is part of what transformed Chua - her approach worked better for her older daughter than her younger.

extreme capitalist writes provocative book on a controversial subject, then gets her PR team to raise up a perfect ****storm in major media outlets everywhere... *everyone* starts talking about it... and... guess who's laughing all the way to the bank?

Western traditions of self-conscious childrearing and thinking about the child go back a lot further than 60 years.

European and US traditions hark from the classical age with Plato and Aristotle. Locke and others wrote about child development during the enlightment and there were incipient studies of child development and baby diaries kept in the Victorian age. Historians have argued that the big shift in attitudes towards children occurred around the turn of the last century when children went from being seen primarily as loved but useful parts of the family to desired almost entirely for the emotional relationship qualities they brought to the family. You can see that grimly by looking at adoption records. In the 1800's, the easiest child to find a home for was a young male teen - not yet rebellious, still dependent, but old enough to work. Babies were literally given away. (Little Buttercup, from Pinafore, was a 'baby farmer', who engaged in this practice of taking in babies that parents paid to get rid of and giving them away to homes willing to take them.)

After 1900, when norms changed to emphasize the parent-child relationship, the ideal adoptee became a female toddler: cute, loving, and impressionable. The burgeoning home economics movement at that time spent a lot of time, effort, and research studying parenting and putting out manuals on the topic of childrearing.

Symonds first work on parenting style was published in 1929.

What has changed is that we went from more of a shaping and training model - similar to the Chinese - to more of a fostering and nurturing model after 1900.

I think we've thought about this a lot longer than 60 years. That's only 1951.