American parents are highly focused on making sure that their children’s talents are groomed for success. Sara Harkness, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut and a pioneering researcher on parenting and culture, found that nearly 25 percent of all of the descriptors used by American parents were a derivation of “smart,” “gifted” or “advanced.” “Our sense of needing to push children to maximize potential is partly driven by fear of the child failing in an increasingly competitive world where you can’t count on the things that our parents could count on,” Harkness suggests.

This is not unlike many Asian nations, where parenting, from a very early age, is focused highly on academics and college acceptance. One Korean mother who Harkness interviewed played English tapes to her 2-month-old baby “because it’s never too early to start,” she says. The parent’s primary role is as an educator, and the child’s role is to respect the parent and repay them with sacrifices.

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, parents used “smart” to describe their children only 10 percent of the time. Dutch parents believe strongly in not pushing their children too hard. “People would talk about a cousin who got a PhD and was very unhappy because there were no jobs at universities, and said that you shouldn’t teach your child to read before they got to school, because then your child would be bored at school and not have any friends,” says Harkness.

Instead, regularly scheduled rest, food and a pleasant environment are the top priorities for Dutch parents.

But in Spain, where families are focused on the social and interpersonal aspects of child development, parents are shocked at the idea of a child going to bed at 6:30pm and sleeping uninterrupted until the next day, instead of interacting and participating in family life in the evenings. “They were horrified at the concept,” says Harkness. “Their kids were going to bed at 10 p.m.”

In the U.S., we want to be Korean and Dutch and Japanese and Jewish and Norwegian and Spanish, all at once. “What is unique to us is the desire to be happy all the time and experience no discomfort and achieve,” says Mogel. “These are competing values.”

The American desire for solutions is starting to radiate outwards. A growing awareness of the scarcity of resources, and the potential for true social mobility, is increasing the pressure on parents globally to “parent” their kids, as a verb. In Taiwan, the most popular parenting books are translations of American guides.

Yet parental anxiety is a terrible idea to export. Instead, “we should be learning from each other,” says Harkness, “and recognizing that there are very different successful pathways to raising children.”

The diversity of ideas should be liberating, not stress-inducing, agrees Gross-Loh. “It was incredibly freeing to realize that there was no single way to do things and it’s totally okay to make mistakes as a parent,” says Gross-Loh of her research. “It gave me space to let my children be who they are, and let them grow into that.”

The U.S., home to immigrants who bring their own traditions from around the world, is uniquely positioned to both learn and let go. American parents can recast their scriptlessness as they see fit, drawing on both global tradition and present theory. Will they? Tomorrow’s children may decide.