Parenting 101 - Forget the bedtime fights!

There is no nice way to put it - I hate those parents that seem to have completely forgotten how it felt to be a kid and make their own children obey all the dumb rules they were once forced to follow. I mean those parents that engage in endless power struggles and make their kids miserable over food, bedtimes or clothing.
My pet peeve concerns those parents that want to raise their children by the book and enforce a strict naptime/bedtime schedule.
When I was little, I was sent to my room for a nap each afternoon. I used to spend that time reading under the covers (that was a good thing, actually) and fortunately my mother rarely checked up on me. Small children do need to sleep in the afternoon and they tend to fall asleep as soon as they're done with lunch. The problem is that many parents insist on keeping this schedule long after the moment their kids are old enough to get through the day without naps.

The same goes for bedtime routines. I cannot for the life of me understand how is it possible to send the kids to bed at 7 p.m. Doing some research for this idea I came across tons of blogs citing scientific papers on how much sleep kids need and why sending them to bed early is every parent's sacred duty.
Spare me! The first and foremost reason parents send their children to bed at an ungodly hour like 7 p.m. is to be rid of them. Most parents would argue kids need to wake up early to go to school. No use mentioning that the problem is the school here, as they try to keep to the schedule even on holidays.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she was complaining how hard it is to put the children (one is 10, the other almost 12) to bed at 8 p.m. as it is still light outside and the kids naturally argue it's not night yet. Should I even bother to point out that on hot summer days kids don't get to play much outside and early evening would be a good time to let them run around in the garden and have fun?
When my first child was little I went to pick her up from day-care at 5 p.m., when I got off work. Back then I was trying to be the perfect mother and read a lot of books , followed parenting blogs and so on. Still, it is one of the things I could not accept. What was I supposed to do? Pick her up at 5 p.m., take her home, give her a bath, prepare diner and then put her to bed? So, when do we spend time together? How about going to a park? How about playing around the house? What can I say? I let her stay up till 9 or 10 p.m. even though she did have to get up early and she grew up just fine!

I won't even go into my younger kid's schedule, as he is homeschooled and is allowed to go to bed whenever he wants. Some days he is tired and falls asleep by 11 p.m., sometimes he insists he cannot sleep so I should stop trying.
Bottom line, parents should listen to their children and trust them. Some kids need more sleep, others are full of energy all day. Trust your children and not some book or parenting expert.