History does repeat itself, because certain probability paths are more likely than others given a particular set of circumstances. A nuclear family will always have tensions, children will always test their parents to find the boundaries, and people will always recycle old ideas. This is not karma, fate or subject to any directing force, it is just that a certain layout of variables leads to a relatively predictable set of outcomes. If you starve a person and give them a raw egg, eventually they will probably eat it. It was not its fate to be eaten, it just fell into that probabilistic outcome.