Tiger mothers (or Asian parenting)

Does it really matter how strict your upbringing has been? Are you more likely to succeed if your parents pushed you just a little bit too hard when you were a child? We all know of the stereotype that Asian parents are the strictest, and most of think it's generally true. We've seen on TV and in the new papers how Asian children are pressured to excel in school and athletics. But we can't really see that Asian children, or grown ups for that matter, are superior to any other human race.

When we watch the Olympics, we don't see any more Asian faces than European, African or American. Neither have we seen that Asians are way more intelligent than anyone else. I'm not saying they're any dumber either. It's just that pressuring the children so they can be the smartest, the fastest or the best musician isn't proving to be beneficial. What it affects the most is the child-parent relationship, which only hurts from this. Most children won't be world famous or win a Nobel Price, and what you're left with is a damaged family.

So where do I want to go with this? I think there's a fine line between pushing a child too hard and preparing it for reality. There's no universal truth for how to raise your kids, but when the disadvantages are larger than the benefits, maybe you're doing something wrong.