My opinion of my parents has changed completely since having kids

When I was growing up I always thought I had good loving parents, and was living a middle class life. I thought my parents were really smart and hardworking. Now I’m grown and have kids of my own. I’m a little older than my dad was when he had me. Through the years my image of them has been tainted. I pretty quickly realized they were not nearly as smart as I had thought. Then as I got into the workforce I realized that while they may have worked hard, they were mostly just spinning their wheels and we were definitely not middle class. Then when I had kids and raised them enough to reflect on my childhood in comparison, I was gobsmacked to realize how shitty my parents actually were. I still feel like I can hardly make sense of it. I know things are complicated and life is messy, but looking back now through the lens of an adult there are so many things that I have seen one way my entire life that were completely wrong. Now I question whether my parents even actually gave a shit about me.

I know people will say this is dumb and naive, but did it take having kids for anyone else to realize they got their parents all wrong?

Edit: I can see I did a poor job explaining myself above. That’s my fault for writing this too quickly. I was not trying to put down my parents or nitpick things they did. My intention was just to show that I went through the regular disillusionment that most adults have realizing their parents were just regular people trying to get by. I also know how hard being a parent is and don’t fault them for mistakes they made. Maybe a better way to put it would have been to say having kids made me realize how my parents saw me through their eyes. I took what they told me at face value and didn’t really pay attention to what they actually did. My parents conceived me on accident a couple of months into dating when they were already middle-aged. It took me having kids to realize I was mostly a thorn in their plans that they felt guilty about, but neither of them wanted a kid. I was intentionally vague because I was mostly interested in hearing about this sort of realization happening to other people.