I'm a Boomer.
When I was growing up, the majority of working class mothers had to work full time to help pay the mortgage.
The middle class mums worked if they were professionals, but otherwise mostly stayed home and kept house.
Thus, most of us were ourselves "latchkey kids".
Back then, the most fashionable advice on parenting came from Dr Spock. He recommended a far more permissive approach than our parents had from their parents.
But there was plenty of variation. Some were so strict and over-controlling that their kids became rebels (of all kinds). Some were drunks or addicts - with their kids chronically neglected &/or abused in numerous ways. Some were well-meaning but stupid, over-feeding junk foods, not providing well-fitting shoes, not getting professional attention for a disability, etc.
It is among the Boomers who, as adults, entered therapy, that the long term damage from sexual and other forms of abuse became known and evident: and millenia old cycles of secrecy about child abuse finally came to the surface. The abuse wasn't just from parents or relatives; it was also from priest, teachers, state orphanages, and adoptive and foster parents. The whole of society had rot in all its ranks.
Each generation imagines it's parents were the worst.
But the truth is all humans are fallible and the mistakes of one generation are perpetrated on the next. It's been going on like this for thousands of generations.
The adult kids' errors might be of the same kind, but they can also be due to overcompensating in the opposite direction.
Parents suffer from their own unhealed wounds.
The best we can do is learn to heal ourselves before we become parents to the next generation.
