Parenting Hoax

There was what I understand to have been a hoax circulating on the Internet over the course of the last week, claiming that the results of a study from the California Parenting Institute show that every parenting style causes children to grow up into adults with problems, becoming “profoundly flawed and joyless human beings.” Regardless of whether or not the parents are over protective or permissive, their children suffer feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood. Sham it may have been but perhaps it caught so many people out because there could almost be a resonance of truth about it.
It was Philip Larkin, who in his poem “This Be the Verse,” claimed:
“They f… you up your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”
Certainly Lord Justice Wall thought so too when he quoted Larkin in a judgment which he gave back in 2009, adding for good measure: “This mother and father are no different from many separated parents who make the damage to their children caused by their separation much worse by continuing their battles against each other in legal proceedings”