Yes, as a rule of thumb, we live through emotionally starved childhoods which causes us to become emotionally detached automatons whose only joy in live is prod

Yes, as a rule of thumb, we live through emotionally starved childhoods which causes us to become emotionally detached automatons whose only joy in live is producing cars and occasionally waging war against France, which is always good clean fun until you guys decide to show up. Kidding aside, I think there are two problems with your interpretation: For once, if you rank acceptance of emotional display on a scale going from Russia to America, you will find us somewhere close to Russia. Here, typical American displays of friendliness ("I'm so happy to see you!", "you guys should totally come over to our place sometimes") are grossly inappropriate, and in some areas (customer servic[1]) they border on being sociopathic, as long as isn't meant literally. But this is just a cultural difference, not something that hints at emotional damage. Russians can laugh, Germans can be friendly and Americans can be reserved or grumpy. It's just that there are huge differences in terms of the social setting in which those things are deemed acceptable. As a second note, there are obviously very diverse approaches to parenting in Germany as well as very differently skilled parents. There are caring and loving parents as well as emotionally distant narcissists. I'm very uncomfortable with you attributing such things to a culturally determined approach to parenting instead of looking at individual factors. What you can actually do is looking at how things like independence, discipline, athleticism and so forth as well as individual practices like spanking are valued. Some of the results might be very surprising. [1] The story about German customers calling the police because they were feeling stalked by wal-mart employees trying to help them with bringing their groceries to their cars is legendary.