Why Gay Daddies Are Superior

It has been fun watching all of the heated debate over Amy Chua's memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and the Wall Street Journal extract from the book, headlined: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.
In it's basest form the controversy boils down to who is doing it better, is it the fiercely strict and relentless asian parent or the permissive, pussy western one?
As with all things, it just isn't that simple.
In the 7 hours a day that my children are in school, they are working pretty hard. They are also playing, eating, talking and sharing with other children (their friends/ social group). These 7 hours, 5 days a week are invaluable and create a great framework for real learning, but it doesn't all happen at school ... it can't.
The learning that happens at home is crucial, layered, complex and in some respects not entirely realized by the parent(s). Beyond academic efforts our children are learning how to behave, how to solve conflict and how to succeed in the daily grind. Whether we are aware or not, we are teaching them how to be a person.
Here is one example of a learning opportunity that is often mishandled:
In recent studies it has been shown that children who watch a lot of educational television act more aggressively toward their peers. A surprising result until you really think about it. in much of this programming the story involves creating conflict between characters with an eventual resolution, but the resolution doesn't come until the end of the story. Younger children don't put this together as well as we might hope they would. Kids need to see problems immediately solved and the methods for reaching the solution need to be explained or "broken down" for them.
In our house we allow our children to witness conflict and resolution between us and then talk to them about it to make sure they understand that we still love each other and were just working something out.
Starting an argument (or discussion) and sending the kids upstairs to "protect" them leaves them hanging ... the model is left incomplete.
Our kids are allowed a good amount of time for "free play". At this point they are not involved in any "extra curricular" activities, there is no time in the schedule for that.
Sleep studies should/may be the subject of a future blog entry, but for now I will share that 12 hours a night is what we consider to be required. This means our boys go to bed every night (lights out) at 7:00.
The school day is extended here. homework happens first and then free time before dinner.
Beyond the required homework each night, we drill math facts. We also do science experiments in our kitchen and challenge our 7 year old to break down words he doesn't think he can read rather than tell him the word.
Creating at home curriculum is a lot of work for us, but we feel it is essential for a child to have this individual time. It helps us assess where they are at and allows us to challenge our children to think critically about what they are doing.
Play dates, birthday parties and sleepovers are allowed (because deep down, we are western pussies).