"When we found out we were going to the bear burden of being parents, we just freaked. It brought up all kinds of issues about our childhoods that were hard to deal with. We didn't really get our shit together about this parenting thing until you were laying there in the hospital looking like a half inflated prune. Your vulnerability and complete dependence on us seemed to couple synergisticly with our desire to treat our kids better than we'd been treated, so we pulled our heads out of our asses and gave our full effort. Much later, it turned out to that that effort more than anything else showed us the kind of people we wanted to be. So ya see we weren't really adults until you were a toddler."
- A speech from an honest parent

 

NOTE TO SELF:
To some extent, the proclivities of the child do affect the responses she/he elicits from her/his parents. However, the parents, as the supposedly mature adults with more experience and access to more resources, are in the position of taking responsibility for the parent-child relationship.