[philh]

> (And the parenting example is a good one. IMHO someone who does their best at raising a child with random genetic disorders like sociopathy, schizophrenia, or Down's Syndrome absolutely deserves as much praise as someone who raises a bright genetically-endowed child to be a great man or woman.)

That's not the question he asked. You're comparing parents who face different challenges. The question was about parents who face the same challenges, and both sets of parents put a lot of effort in, but one set is good at parenting and the other set is bad at parenting.

[nostrademons]

Like perhaps one set of parents consist of an orphan and someone who grew up in a household with mentally-ill parents, while the other set come from comfortable intact middle-class nuclear families? And the first set just don't know how to parent because they had shitty or no role-models growing up?

I would still respect the first set of parents. They did the best they could with what they had to work with. It's a sad situation though...in a perfect world effort would equal results, but the world ain't perfect.