COLUMBIA, MO—Confirming conventional wisdom on the topic, a report published this week by researchers at the University of Missouri determined that children of parents in many cases go on to one day become parents themselves. “While we expected to find a correlation between growing up around parents and becoming a parent later in life, we did not realize just how overwhelming the connection would be, with well over 80 percent of children of parents eventually taking up parenting themselves,” said the study’s lead author, Martha Cantrell, who examined the backgrounds of 15,000 parents and found that nearly all had grown up in homes where they were exposed to child-rearing on a daily basis. “It’s not surprising that these kids end up on the path to parenting. Children are bound to replicate this behavior as adults, though some actually start as early as high school.” Cantrell added that the best hope for breaking the cycle was for parents to quit raising their child as early as possible.

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