| You make good points. It goes even deeper than this.
The parents to a child are godlike figures. Without the parents the child will literally die, therefore any abandonment by the parents is life-threatening. This is why the first few years of a child are probably the most important, however, following years are equally as important.
If the child has loving parents (loving used in the sense as M. Scott Peck does in "The Road Less Travelled") then the child will have parents it trusts completely. Loving parents here are parents that sacrifice their time, work on their child, show it both affection and soft punishment when something bad has happened, and parents that help the child grow into an independently thinking person, someone who can stand on his or her own feet, because ultimately this is the role of the parents. The role of the parents is not to discipline it into whatever they themselves are or believe in, it is to discipline the child into choosing what it itself wishes to believe in (thus creating even more trust as the child sees that the parents really do care for it).
If there is genuine love as described above, the child will completely trust its parents, however even if genuine love is not present, the child will still trust its parents because they are all it has. This means that the parents could be devastating to the child's mental growth. If the child sees father beat up mother and mother taking it then that's just the way things are. Couple that with unloving parents towards the child and you have a maelstrom.
But usually things aren't this extreme. Usually the parents show love, but fail to show true discipline. True discipline is not discipline that is taught to the child, but the discipline the child learns through the parents' behavior. If the father says that child should do his homework, yet child sees that father doesn't have a job and drinks, then consciously it thinks I have to do my homework, but unconsciously it thinks "Why do I have to do my homework when dad doesn't even have a job?" The father himself has no discipline, therefore the child will not have discipline either.
It is not usually the fact that if the father is a pussy then child will be a pussy, but rather if father has no DISCIPLINE or LOVE that son will have a lack in something elementary. If the father shows he has discipline in work but no love in the family, then son will steer towards mother and resent father, since father never helped him in anything. This can lead to an overabundance in motherly affection, causing neediness in women later on in life. Dependency. The son needs the affection, and when he isn't getting it from mother, he needs it from a girl. The girl replaces the mother. The father probably never taught him anything since there was no genuine love, so the son does not trust father in teaching him anything valuable. This translates into son not trusting other males, such as male friends. This may also lead to him not wanting to be like his father, seeking, through anger, to change himself for the better, only to become like his father, since his father was probably an angry person himself that did not change.
However there are traits that the son will have from father from early childhood as well. However all traits can be changed as the map gets outdated and a new map gets updated. This takes time and effort, however many many behaviors, if not most are attributed to parents' behavior towards their child.
If the mother threatens the child with abandonment in early childhood, the child will perceive women, or even the world, to always be abandoning him. Obviously this is not the case, but this has been instilled into the child's brain from early childhood.
And it goes on.
Yes you are definitely right that parents act as rolemodels. It goes incredibly deep.
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