Great topic.
Parenting has a dramatic impact on your chances in life, definitely. What's interesting is I think that our world views are greatly biased depending on our childhood, which arguably makes it difficult to respond to this with an unbiased tone...but I'll give it a go!
I feel I have a unique perspective. My wife was raised in a conservative Christian household (oldest of 3, two girls and a boy), while I was raised very liberal (youngest of 4, one girl and three boys).
In my wife's home, the parents were in absolute charge and music, TV and mode of dress were all highly restricted. Discipline was swift and effective. The children were shielded from the rest of the world, and raised with Christians values and the value of obedience. They were all protected and kept safe, and all conflict between the adults was kept behind closed doors.
The resulting adult (my wife) is someone with strong values, a wonderful positive spirit and a confidence that resulted from the safe environment where she was raised. The drawbacks are that she can be quite naive, has had trouble adapting to the real world, and really struggled with asserting herself.
My upbringing was decidedly different. In my house, we could more or less do what we wanted when we wanted to do it (within reason). I had no curfew starting at a young age, and my Mom found out I was smoking and allowed me to do so starting at the age of 13 (her argument being that she didn't want me to hide it from her but also didn't want to "ban" it). Drug use was very common in my family, and there was also substantial physical and some sexual abuse, and a lack of safety and discipline. Our house was still loving, but there was open conflict on a regular basis. My eldest brother was an untreated schizophrenic, and both my older sister and eldest older brother ran away from home before their 14th birthdays. Not the worst situation I've heard of, but far from the best.
The resulting adult is someone who learned to take care of himself very early by necessity, is unafraid to assert himself, and is independent and often coldly logical. The drawbacks are a tendency to withdraw, a deep need for personal space and have a hard time trusting others...and is often coldly logical. :lol: At times, I can also be unreasonably combative.
The great life my wife and I have built has been the result of years of struggle, mostly relating to my assimilating and moving past the traumas and lack of safety in my childhood. My wife has had some things rough, but we agree it wasn't nearly as difficult for her to adapt and thrive in the world.
We've discussed this over the years, and both agree that neither extreme is ideal, although if and when we have children we'll be strict, and set fairly strict rules.
My point? To the degree that your upbringing had traumas or abuse, it becomes that much more difficult to build a life for yourself. I recall feeling in my late teens as though I didn't deserve a good life, and that I'd never amount to much. That lack of confidence made my 20's very rough. No excuse for not picking myself up and finding a better way to live, though - at some point the pity party has to end, and you have to learn and grow as best you can.
