Self-Esteem vs. "Chinese" Parenting

This article in the WSJ about the superiority of "Chinese mothers" has been making the rounds of late. The debate has been had by people who know far more about raising children than I do. But the reason the debate exists, I think, is right here:

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Without question, this is the blinkered, self-emasculating guilt that the modern Western parent has willingly embraced. For some reason, we have decided that to have a child is a dastardly act, and that a parent must labor for decades, giving up all trace of adult life or personality, in order to atone for it. It's gotten so bad that a complete 180-degree turnaround -- becoming a totalitarian shame-dispenser -- can now be seen as an outre position worthy of a new look.

For myself, Here is what I wrote on the subject in September of 2005:

Our modern child-rearing techniques seem focused on the emotional lives of children. I think this is wrong, because in the grand scheme of things, the emotions of children are transitory and relatively unimportant. Child-rearing should be about not the blooming of the child's life but the coaxing into existence of the adult the child must become. None of the research-approved, peaceable parenting skills that the elite would foist on us are half so valuable as inducing a child to think beyond his immediate wants and desires. And I am unconvinced that this can be done without the use of fear.

Yes, I said fear. It is written that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To this, I add that the fear of parents is the beginning of familial peace. the State of childhood is a state of constant physical and emotional flux. They are long on impulse and short on experience. Catering to that mind-set gives that mind-set power that it neither deserves nor can use justly. To make up for that experience, it is necessary for parents to set boundaries and defend them to the utmost. As the best defense is a good offense, a properly built fear of parental anger keeps boundaries defended, sometimes without the parent even knowing it.

It is not that I love children the less, but that I love adults more.