Eating their young

I was walking the dog today and thinking about parenting.  These two things are not necessarily unrelated.

I thought: if people can be lousy spouses, and crappy friends and embarrassments as siblings, then of course they can be awful parents.    

Maybe we have greater sensitivity around lousy parents because while we may not ever marry or be in a sustained romantic or platonic relationship, we are first children.  And siblings are in a special category: we expect them to be pains.