That sounds a lot like David Breitstein's philosophy and one I follow religiously. The idea is to have only as many parent/child relationships that are truly needed when creating a model or assembly. This makes your models and assemblies more robust and predictable. Using variable tables to link...
I have a suspicion that Solid Edge will eventually become the base module for UG/NX. Why else would UGS continue to develop something but not make any effort to sell it.