In the Netherlands (Europe), I felt like basically following the system would land them wherever was appropriate based on their aptitude and inclinations. There was basically no better path to follow than public education. Extracurriculars don’t factor into anything, sports are just sports, and solely for recreation. No extra lessons outside of school just to make the entrance exam for your junior high school.
I feel like this lack of need to worry about the future lends itself well to a much more relaxed style of parenting.
I don’t feel like this is true in the US (or Japan), where which school(s) you go to has a significant effect on your future, so parents have to consider everything from the start.
Certainly, for the vast majority of people I've ever known, getting a spot at Oxbridge not only was not 'extremely important' - it wasn't even a consideration.
I know, the list is longer than Oxford and Cambridge. But it's a neat shorthand.
Having spent a bunch of time working with people on these particular universities' access programs (where they essentially spend a lot of time and money encouraging more people to apply, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds), this "consideration" is often a deeply ingrained bias in the school teaching staff.
There are large numbers of students who are both good enough to go to Oxbridge and would thrive there, who aren't getting that opportunity because their teachers have already decided it's "not for them".
If any distinction is made, it’ll be on the ‘level’ of education you went to, not what school.
That said, I expect users of parenting.stackexchange.com are much more educated and wealthy than the average parent and don't really represent a generic American approach to parenting.
Yeah I've got lazy with the TV but I still feel their use of technology is healthier than at most of the people/children since everywhere I look people just put phones/tablets to hands of little kids and still get them hooked at early age, let alone potentially ruin their eyesight development.
It's because in the US the thinking regarding such things seems to revolve around rights and never mentions duties. In Europe we tend to view our duties to our children differently.
In my view one cannot have liberty without duty. That is to say, there is no such thing as perfect liberty.
As I'm sure you know, but which bears repeating: parenting.stackexchange.com, or really any other online community, is not representative of most people. Communities like that are self-selected and insular. Even open communities create and reinforce their own perspective. There are kinds of questions which become acceptable to ask, and kinds of responses which are acceptable to provide, but only within that small shard of reality.