Aggressive, unsubstantive comments about personally intimate situations... please don't.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20118297 and marked it off-topic.

Yes, I'd like to read a "I must have messed up somewhere". That would be a good starting point to "what can I do about it".

that's a bad attitude to take and leads to a lot of unnecessary guilt about something you have little control over. parents cannot do much to shape the personality and ability of their children in adulthood.

Guilt is unnecessary, agreed. And so is blame. Taking responsibility is. Without, you can't fix your mistakes.

And yes, personality and ability of children are definitely shaped by the parents. Of course, now that the kid is an adult, things are much harder to fix. But that doesn't mean the parents have no role in it.

Yes I would say the mistake was made 20 years ago

The daughter seems to be doing fine and we don't know the cause behind why is son is behaving the way he does.