A Father Vision

I wonder a lot lately how much a father really can see of the relationship between his actions (or lack thereof) and the resulting effects in his son.  Obviously, the more salient facets of our behavior alter the shape our children take.  E.g. if we are overall more cruel versus kind, I have no doubt you will get a different type of young man from the experience. Yet, as any man who had a less than perfect relationship with their father knows, you still end up doing things as a father that you HATED your dad doing.... and swore you'd never do. Of course the boy is not the exact same person as the man.... one has a different view when one stands in a different place in life. But, I grow ever more suspect that we are less in a directing role, and instead are more a bundle of largely automatic processes with a thin layer of individual "personality" wrapping the "machinery," with our children generally running the same "code" in their own box of automation but mostly taking "inputs"from their peers and the society they are immersed in..... and only tiny snippets here and there taken from the parents and embedded into their being.

I'm not saying we don't owe it to our children to give them all the love and care we can. I'm just questioning if we have as much influence as we like to believe.  Perhaps we are applying our time, energy and anxiety based more on wishful thinking than factual results.  A bit like trying to use extensive vocabulary and proper sentence structures when talking to your dog when all that really matters is attitude and "tone."