Rachael Cusk, one my all time fave authors, holds that parents always fail their children, that it’s built into the system. I don’t know that I’d go that far but she’s on to something. The world constantly mitigates against whatever values we think we are inculcating. The whole mess of world/parents/peers/formal education/media — and now we have social media, the greatest mind control technology ever developed, in the mix — is such a stew that even God doesn’t know how they turn out the way they do, which is probably a very good thing, because we really don’t want to know. So it’s definitely fucked up, another entry in the immense catalog of injustices, to blame unpleasant character traits on mothers.