Before I had kids of my own, I had a discussion similar to this one with a woman whose children were grown. I said to her, "How the hell can some one like me have kids? I'll screw 'em up for sure!" She said, "they're not born perfect, trust me on this. They come into the world with their own agendas - they already have personalities (and issues) almost as soon as they're born." (or words to this effect.)

I appreciated what she said - it seemed to take some of the pressure off - and remembered it later, when I had two kids, completely different, with their own personalities and ways of dealing with the world right away.

Now maybe how you start has to do with the accumulated experiences of your previous lives, and maybe it has to do with genes and probabilities and prenatal nutrition and how much acid your parents dropped and other unfathomable factors that resulted in your own personal brain chemistry. I'm just not sure I agree with the "blank slate" idea, where we start out without hang-ups or predispositions to be one way or another.