So, I read this article:
And that picture of a childhood that was painted in it sounds pretty miserable. I'm glad I hadn't experienced one quite as bad.
In relation to finding a happy medium of rebuking, what I will say is that there is a significantly appreciable difference between aggression and assertiveness. The ideal exercise of aggressive power is like one of those roman emperors who took dictatorial power during a crisis, and then gave up power as soon as the crisis was over. Aggressive power is to be expressed as sparsely as possible.
Not for the sake of people pleasing, but for the sake of harm minimization. Primum non nocere.
And also, rather than simply being limited to particular parents, there are entire cultures and cultural groups that adhere to "guess culture" - where it is expected that people will guess at or implicitly understand the "correct" norms, as opposed to "ask culture", where anything can be requested, anything can be questioned, and anything can be rejected.
In my dealings with people who come from east asian cultures, I have observed that many (but not all) were raised to guess, rather than ask. Compounding