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An older friend says, "If I had known how much fun grandchildren are, I would have skipped having kids entirely and gone straight to being a grandparent!"
That skip-a-generation theme is the basis for a classic Russian story. A man spends his rubles on a bottle of vodka, drinks it, but fails to get the buzz he wants. Frustrated, he digs deeper in his pockets. He finds several kopecks and buys a succession of smaller glasses of liquor --- none of which pushes him into intoxication. Finally, in desperation he uses his sole remaining coin to purchase a tiny spoonful of alcohol which he swallows. With that he achieves the drunken state that he seeks. "Oh, if only I had bought that last spoon of vodka first!" he complains.
Silly, sure --- and we do it constantly: blaming current leadership for the consequences of decisions taken a decade ago ... praising the player who happens to score the final goal of the game ... punishing children whose parents neglected them in their infancy ....
(correlates: RepoMan, PhilosophicalBumpersticker, StatusGenetics, ...)