In order to hold someone accountable for their actions you need to allow them a choice in the first place. Disallowing children from making choices is one way of protecting them from the consequences of a bad decision: by not allowing them to make it in the first place. That is what coddling is, protecting from the environment. Protecting them from the choice is just a more extreme version of shielding them from the consequences.
Ye. But the hard problem as I see it is the "the consequences of a bad decision" part, for which many "bad decisions" have no consequence but the arbitrary punishment from adults itself.
I.e. not cleaning up toys from the floor. Staying up late. Wearing different colored socks. Playing or speaking too laud. What ever. The consequences of those are really complex or fuzzy and the threshold level for breaking the rules arbitrary.
Also the subset of "bad decisions" that maybe have some distant future bad consequence, i.e. eating too much ice cream, are even harder. Or all the 'none will like you if you do that' things you need to teach kids.
