I understand that. I was lucky having dedicated parents, that were willing to sacrifice their own ambitions, and take risks that would clearly be more beneficial to me, rather than to them.
Others, might not have been so lucky.
For me, caring about my own children's health/well-being/future was bit eye opening, in the sense that I was a lot more egoistic, before becoming a parent.
I also think that recognition improved my spousal relationship.
And that's what I wanted to tell my Dad... but I missed that opportunity...
There is a lot of materials out there about family dynamics that get passed through generations. [1]
It is exceptionally difficult for an individual to recognize negative traits that must be filtered out, if he/she is to have a more normal relationships with their spouse and their children.
Most families have traits, that overtime, should be filtered out. But not forgotten.
Significant portion of my parent's upbringing was dictated that their parents went through (physical torture, captivity, war, loosing loved ones, loosing first families during war, real famine, property taken away, ridicule and persecution at work and otherwise, for their ethnic background and so on ).
My parents, filtered out lot of the family dynamics that was passed on to them due to the above.
But we did not forget what my grand parents went through..
And just like my parents,
I do not excuse my own actions by saying 'well, my parents that that to me...' or anything like that.
It is a conscious act, not 'natural' (at least not for me), and I work on it with my spouse, recognizing that there is nothing wrong in improving what we learnt in our upbringing.
[1] https://blogs.psychcentral.com/family/2012/03/family-dynamic...