<p>Like everything else that is important in parenting, it’s a complex interactive balance between context, parent and child. All parents grapple to get the balance right, and it’s difficult because one parental approach does not at all work for all kids. Moreover, some kids turn out messed up, others turn out very successful, and its quite possible it had little or nothing to do with parental behavior, or everything to do with parental behavior. </p>
<p>Of course, before anyone is a parent, they think it’s much more black and white and simple than that, (and oh so obvious based on their biased tiny sample of observation and personal experience). Part of the experience of parenting is learning that our naive simple beliefs before parenting were all wrong. Or learning what worked for us as kids doesn’t work for our own children, or what worked with the first child has the opposite effect with the second. </p>
<p>My sister’s children with very different backgrounds: A child you could never pressure or it would entirely backfire. Another who is entirely self-propelled so it was a non-issue. Another who thanks his parents repeatedly now, as a very happy adult, for pushing him relentlessly to study his instrument when he wanted to quit so many times in his youth (now is an accomplished professional musician but I used to think they were wrong in their approach). </p>
<p>While anecdotal evidence can be helpful for showing a general theory has exceptions, it’s useless for drawing general principles. You’ve got small biased samples, selective memory, selective interpretation of the data, and no control group.</p>
<p>There is this thing called social science. Sure, as a naive lay person you can find some newspaper article somewhere on some study on just about anything, but that is a far cry from examining the evidence from controlled studies in peer reviewed journals emanating over decades of research that points in a particular direction.</p>