but if I can't love my parents: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

I agree that we absolutely romanticize the impact of parenting. But if we can't love our parents, whom can we love? Forgive the clichée as I quote Khalil Gibran: "Your children are not your children, but the product of life's longing for itself." It's a terrifically frightening notion to think that one could grow up to be anything - history shows this idea being played out in terrible contexts (think eugenics, etc.) We take comfort in our own individuality by denying this fact - for the sake of hope, love, call it what you will, we desire to believe there is something inherent in us as individuals. As the world gets smaller and smaller (Tom Friedman says it's flat), this becomes more and more difficult for us to do in the face of all the sameness. We can see echos of ourselves on the other side of the world. And if we don't attribute importance to our parents, simply two little people who created one more little person, what's to stop us from becoming those people we see so far away?