The only way for the US’ relative position not to decline with China’s rise involve megadeaths, just as after WWII it’s relative power could only decline.

That's an uncomfortable idea - growth of a nation being dependent on a few people working their ass off. Like sacrificial lambs. Though almost all of these people probably do it willingly.

I watched my poor Sikh friend exasperated with his two young daughters who desperately wanted a Christmas tree like all the other kids and bugged him endlessly about it. He lost. It was pretty funny. They've both now grown into fine young women who are proud of their Sikh religion, so no harm done.

My parents absolutely should have emphasized academics and my need to go to college to break out of the poverty trap my family was in. But they did that in violent and traumatic ways. They did that by using guilt and shame and burden as the primary engine to drive me to act. They are not alone in this. Friends of Asian-American heritage (East and South Asia) tell me their parents did the same.

Those things work when you're fighting for survival and then turn out to be incredibly harmful when you're not. It's taken me years of work and will take years more to undo that damage.

I understand your sensitivity to your daughter's situation. If you live in upper middle class America, and I suspect you do, your daughter is observing a deeply unnatural form of childhood. But there is a middle ground between squeezing performance out of young brains and being coddled into doing nothing. I hope for both of your sakes you look for it.

Slave like conditions can do that to a more moderate work-life balance culture.

If you don’t want your children to do this what are you going to do about it? Help them get real jobs without going to college? Accelerate their paths into professional jobs by accelerating their academic careers? Because if you don’t do something out of the ordinary you’re going to get pretty much the same results as other people in your position.

Kids need less money these days and are more focused on education vs work experience.

The thing is, such a phenomenon exists. And kids pushed too hard may grow resentful or plain reject parents ideas and rebel. Not all them grow super succesfull. Plenty just grow feeling like failures.

It is possible to push children just right, of course. But there is such a thing as too much and those adults then complain (that is how I know).

China is eating our lunch? Excuse me?

But the folks criticizing the article aren’t just asserting that these things are good. They’re claiming that not having these things is so damaging that a woman who prioritizes her career over attending birthday parties and school events is a bad mother. But many children grow up to be perfectly well adjusted despite not having those things. That is evidence of the fact that, even if those things are “good,” they’re not “essential.”