[borroka]

It's a matter of probability like everything in life. A good parent can lead to good outcomes, say, 60% of the time. A bad parent, 20% of the time. The numbers are random, but that's the idea. In retrospect, the vast majority of parents I knew when I was a kid were "bad," not in the sense of abusive, but in the sense of having no idea. They didn't have any clue about their own lives, how many could they have about their children?

They didn't even want to inquire and then decide what was best for their children. Too many parents are given a pass because some sort of "sacred virtue" is assigned to parenting and any mistake that does not include beating their children is somehow forgiven or given a pass.

The "they did the best they could" is a cop-out: did they do the best they could given their laziness, poor impulse control, vision that doesn't go beyond the fence of their backyard?

For example, I was an excellent student, the best in the school, in terms of awards and recognition. Not Einstein, mind you, but someone they should have identified as very talented from a scholastic/intellectual standpoint. My parents never saw this in me, for some reason, because now, I would immediately identify as very talented someone who did as well as I did. My parents never hit me or told me I was stupid or anything like that. They simply acknowledged that I was a good student and that was it. If they had said, this woman is talented, we need to support her, find her mentors, send her to the best universities, I have little doubt that I would have been very successful.

I was successful anyway, after traveling a winding and long road, but my path to professional and financial success could have been (these are my a priori odds) much easier and faster.

Now, you might say, if they had acted differently, maybe you wouldn't be here, etc., which is a very defeatist way of thinking. Their process was wrong and for no other reason than their "intellectual laziness".

[grog454]

>the best in the school, in terms of awards and recognition. Not Einstein, mind you

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Einstein wasn't academically accomplished until his great works were published.

A lot of your story reminds me of my own but I've reached a different conclusion. Specifically I suspect I would have been accepted into certain magnet schools (pre college) with the sourcing and simple suggestion of taking practice tests. If I had a kid that I suspected would be capable of excelling in that kind of environment that is exactly what I would do to help improve the odds of said kid achieving that goal.

But I don't resent my parents for not bothering to help in this way. I'm honestly not sure why but I suspect it has to do with an unspoken and mutual lack of respect for "academics". The system is so easily gamed, and a gameable system is a flawed one.

[johntiger1]

i think you're making the mistake of judging them with hindsight. they made the best possible decision with the resources they had, their mental model and their risk tolerance and belief in the world

[borroka]

"they made the best possible decision with the resources they had, their mental model and their risk tolerance and belief in the world"

Can this not be said for any action, any thought, including, if we are talking about parenting, beating the kids up? "It is the way I was brought up, my father always told me, a few slaps and they'll learn!". "I was feeling so alone and I could not control myself when they were crying, I am so sorry I decided to use the stove gas to put them to sleep, that's what my grandmother used to do!".

My belief is that that kind of "therapist's speech", which as becoming more popular as therapy became the fashionable path for people wanting to make changes in their lives, of "you did your best", "those were the tools that you had available at the time", has caused many to avoid their responsibilities by paying therapists (people who got "second hand smoke" did not even had to pay) like times back they used priest to carry the same function and getting the same result: absolution and comfort.