My MIL believes that people who had bad childhoods will repeat the mistakes their parents made with their own children. She did a childcare course in the 1970's, where I'm sure she learned this, and she absolutely clings to that view.
I told her that my parents used to hit me when I was a child and she replied saying that she thinks people who were hit as a child 'have something in them' and 'just can't help themselves' - that they will slip up and do the same to their own kids, even if they don't want to. She tries to catch me out - asking me questions to see if I would 'abuse' my children.
She also holds similar beliefs about other behaviours.
Perhaps I am unusual, but when I was about 8, I remember looking objectively at my alcoholic abusive Dad, and selfish manipulative mother, and drawing the conclusion that THEY were the ones in the wrong, who were only human and had issues. I made a choice to be different to them. And throughout my life I've managed to stick to that, and do things my own way. My parenting style is very different.
I find it hard to get my head around how she can be so sure that people just turn out to be carbon copies of what went before them. I am intelligent, educated and moved away from home, experiencing lots of things throughout my life. Surely an inteligent individual can objectively assess a situation and make a life choice that is different to their upbringing. I feel she is suspicious and untrusting of me, just because of my past, which is unfair.