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Is a child raised with nothing more than interaction with his/her parents? No. A child is exposed to other children, media, news, etc. There are so many influential factors; it's ridiculous to only consider parents.

Yes, I would blame my parents if they spoiled me all of my life with "sweets when I demanded" and I grow up to become a brat? Of course. But it also work both ways. I'm not going to get into this further considering it's really a shady topic and I don't have children to have a relevant response.

My logic didn't say anything about what kind of parents make what kind of child. The connection between the parents' action and the result is far from being that straightforward. And still, since every little detail in their child's life is a result of their decisions, they are, in the end, to blame for everything.

In fact, growing up with not-so-nice parents seem to be a recipe for nice kids. I don't know about happy, but nice.

It implied it:

You argued this: We are what our parents make of us. If our parents are bad, we will be bad. If our parents are good, we will be good.

It's funny that you call it complicated but end the paragraph in a summary that makes it sound very simple and straightforward. I disagree that our lives are completely dominated by our parents. If you put it into perspective parents have very little control or insight. The average teenager spends their day at school and then goes out with friends. Their lives consist of socializing. This socialization and the people they socialize with builds character and is strongly influential. It's not feasible for a parent to be able keep their children at home and control everything they do. The decisions my parents make don't influence me very much. Currently the only thing influencing me is the outside world. My parents have never influenced me. I live my own life; I have the ability to control my future. I build my own character, my parents don't build my character. What kind of person I will be is decided by me for the most part, and then by socializing, and then by my parents.

As a matter of fact, I didn't. And let me tell you something else: It doesn't look like our view on parents are so different. We're just answering the question from different aspects.

You're looking at the parent's role at the stage we live in. We agree on the parent's pretty minimal ability to control their children.

What I'm saying, is that parents have a tremendous influence on the shaping of the character, which takes place during the years from which we remember nothing or very little. Issues like self confidence, trust, the ability to love, what kind of persons we're attracted to, if we stick to a mission or give up quickly and so on, all these are pretty much set by our parents and the people they chose to leave us with.

Nobody really knows how to get things right. Caring and loving parents sometimes end up doing things wrong. Children of negligent parents may find themselves grown up by a grandmother, which may do the job fantastically. It's far more complicated than just "good mother, good child".

And still, the responsibility lies on the parents. If they couldn't care less about their children, but somehow things turned out OK, that doesn't mean they are good parents, but still, there is nothing to blame them for. And if they had wonderful intentions, but still got it wrong, they're lucky that there is no parental police.

The bottom line, and only the bottom line counts.