The report, Building Character, studied data from 9,000 households in Britain to find out what sort of upbringing produced character traits, such as application, self-regulation and empathy, which gave the best guarantee of future success.
When a whole range of factors including household income, family structure, parental education and breast-feeding for at least six months were taken into account, discipline emerged as the key indicator of likely future prosperity.
Children with parents who practised "tough love" were twice as likely to develop good character traits by the age of five as those with "disengaged" parents – and were also likely to do significantly better than those with "laissez faire" or "authoritarian" parental regimes.
Source: here