As I'm answering and thinking about some of these questions involving parents and their relationship with their children, I'm realizing why my parents are the way they are. My mom grew up in a poor family that were, in her words, "absolute lazy slobs". So they never paid for her or her siblings education, cars, weddings, etc. And my grandparents weren't the most involved with their lives. So my mom, who could have provided me and my sister with a couple of these things, chose not to (and I don't really care). She also didn't know how to really parent me because I was the more rebellious one and her parents didn't know how to be good parents. Would you purposely try to avoid parenting your children the way your parents did? Or would you parent the way your parents did because that's all you know?