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davislane1
Children expose children to ideas and concepts. Hardly something you can blame on a specific parent, when a completely different parent in the same school was the weak link. What makes matters worse is the thought of how many years these ideas and concepts have been circulating. You see it's not something any one parent can control.
Your premise is correct, but I have a difficult time agreeing with your conclusion.
Here's my argument: Children are exposed to ideas and concepts throughout their development. While it is true that parents cannot exert an absolute control over what their children are exposed to, they do exert a primary influence by (1) choosing the dominant culture that their children are exposed to, (2) identifying positive and negative influences and attempting to eliminate the latter, and (3) teaching their children effective coping skills through both direct and indirect communication (which enables them to effectively handle peer pressure, cultural and interpersonal conflicts, emotions, etc.). As a result, effective parenting plays a major role in shaping non-genetic cognitive factors; most significantly, as it pertains to the discussion topic, the the ability to empathize and establish a rational sense of morality.
Does this mean that parents can simply mold children's minds into whatever they deem desirable with proper shrewdness and savvy? No. Outside influences are too numerous to effectively mitigate and "ruling with an iron fist" would undermine individuality and likely cause the child to rebel, both points you've touched on. Moreover, genetic factors are completely uncontrollable. If someone is born with a sociopathic personality, you won't be able to deprogram it by showing them how great altruism is or by going full medieval and quite literally beating Jesus into them.
Nevertheless, parenting still plays the lead role in early childhood and adolescent development because effective parenting nurtures beneficial cognitive skills and mitigates negative ones. As such, it is not a trivial aspect of the problem. By contrast, video games are a trivial influence because they do not attempt to exert their influence upon users, they just provide a consumable (fantasy). How that fantasy is digested depends on individual cognition, which we've determined is highly affected by parenting.
Therefore, blaming bad parenting for producing bad apples is not silly, as is the practice of blaming the crop on video games. The criticism isn't faultless by any means, but it is far more worthwhile to investigate than this tripe about violence in media.