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Ive never really thought of karma as a magical thing. Ive always thought of it as being cause and effect,

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This also has a name: life
A chain of causes & effects, multiplied by an infinity of outcomes, and, for those who Want... also Free Will.
Now karma already has a definition and I think that it has way too many errors, no need to amplify it by finding new interpretations of it.
See, what happens is, that if we choose to believe in karma, our freedom is being obstructed because we live under the impression that there is something/ somebody out there, watching us and judging us. How can this lead to a happy life? Why this need for an arbiter? I think it's about time for us to grow up and wipe our own asses when we need it.

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but with the opinion that it also applies to moral choices. And i guess the bad raising of a child is an example of poor moral choice, leading to a poor outcome.

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Can you define "moral" for me?
In actual, practical and discernible terms.
Also, what does morality have to do with raising a kid in an unhealthy way? There are parents who have "issues", fears, frustrations, inhibitions... etc, and by simply raising their kids they transmit all of those to them. Should we label all those psychological problems and a lack of "morality"?

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mean anyone who would negelect a child obivously has some issues which are going to come back to bite them.

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MushroomTrip said:

And yet another definition for Karma
How many are there until now?

The example you gave is a pure psychological effect, which has nothing to do with karma.

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Karma, in the original Buddhist scriptures, is a blind machine; in fact, it is functionally identical with the scientific concept of natural law. Sentimental ethical ideas about justice being built into the machine, so that those who do evil in one life are punished for it in another life, were added later by theologians reasoning from their own moralistic prejudices. Buddha simply indicated that all the cruelties and injustices of the past are still active: their effects are always being felt. Similarly, he explained, all the good of the past, all the kindness and patience and love of decent people is also still being felt.

Since most humans are still controlled by fairly robotic reflexes, the bad energy of the past far outweighs the good, and the tendency of the wheel is to keep moving in the same terrible direction, violence breeding more violence, hatred breeding more hatred, war breeding more war. The only way to "stop the wheel" is to stop it inside yourself, by giving up bad energy and concentrating on the positive. This is by no means easy, but once you understand what Gurdjieff called "the horror of our situation," you have no choice but to try, and to keep on trying.

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