Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

In general your kids' friends are much more important to them in the long run than you are. You are always there, but their friends represent the society they will be sinking or swimming in. They turn away from you and your tastes and opinions for a reason: their survival depends on understanding the tastes and opinions of their peers. You will stick with them (usually). Their peers are free to abandon them. Peer relationships are fragile but important. Parent-child relationships, however important, are much more durable, so they require less attention from the child.

To elaborate a bit: your parenting is much more likely to affect how your kids parent their kids. And, for better or for worse, mostly what they'll be doing is avoiding the mistakes you made. Your mom was distant and judgmental? You'll be super attentive and supportive, assuming your kids need what you wanted. And quite likely you'll overshoot the mark and set up a pitfall your kids will avoid when it's their turn. And they will then overshoot the mark. The cycle of parenting. Hakuna Matata.

Is this anecdata/personal folklore/"common sense" or is this based on science? It sounds like the former, tbh. Things tend to be more complex than this.

I suspect it's the former, but it doesn't seem outrageous (like all "common sense"). I think the hard part is to replicate the parts one's parents did right. Like IT, when someone gets things right, they're invisible. When they get things wrong, it seems like the only thing they ever did. This is part of why I want my children's grandparents involved as much as possible in their life. I need to \alpha \times \grandparents + (1 - \alpha) \times \parents my kids.