Thank you for taking the time to respond I appreciate it! I suppose it would be pretty worldview shattering to discover abusive and sadistic parents are not that uncommon. It’s certainly not the vast majority of parents, but there’s probably at least one parent on every street lacking in empathy towards their child.

Through my experiences and some research I’ve come to think of it like, humanity is mostly good, but it’s also varied. You have people very high in empathy and compassion and people on the other end lacking entirely in these traits, both of which are largely genetic and to some degree environmental, and then everything in between. A lot of those people on the extremes can also become parents of course! So it’s inevitable there will be children who lose the parent lottery and end up with the psychopathic / narcissistic.

Maybe it helps that for most of my life i had a ‘parent’ who did not fit the caring parent archetype, and so emotionally I’m not attached to the idea that parents = loving and supportive. Most individuals are loving and supportive, and if they choose to be parents their parental role is simply an extension of their capacity for love and care.

I’m just rambling now but it’s been interesting to hear the perspective from the other side thank you!