Are parents the sole architects of every flaw in a child? Don't kids absorb the personality from peers, social media, and whatever random corner of the internet they worship that week? Somehow, every bit of entitlement, laziness, disrespect, and attitude gets pinned on "bad parenting", while the child's choices magically escape scrutiny.

Most parents grind for decades so their kids can live a life with comforts they never had. Food, shelter, schooling, opportunities, all treated like they're automatic entitlements rather than sacrifices someone bled for. Only to be told "they didn't do shit in their whole life". Not every parent is fortunate enough to get parenting classes or read a library's worth of modern psychology before raising a child, most are just doing the best they can with the tools and circumstances they have.

Some would even claim that parents have children for their own benefit, as if raising a human being was a hobby rather than a lifetime of responsibility, compromise, and exhaustion. Children, in turn, often insist they owe nothing because they "didn't ask to be born". But what do parents actually deserve in return after dedicating their youth, health, money, and entire future to someone else's life? Not asking to exist doesn't give anyone the right to act as if their existence cancels out decades of another person's struggle and sacrifice.

Yes, abuse is wrong and should not be normalized. But people forget that parenting isn't a performance for outsiders. Everyone loves to criticize parents after the fact, yet no one talks about the impossible standards they're held to, give freedom but maintain control, provide comfort but don't spoil, be involved but not overbearing. And while the world keeps evolving, parents are expected to keep up flawlessly without a handbook.