I have been led to believe that a pokemon's stats change after evolution because the two forms have different Individual values, which is confusing to me because the pokemon is the same and it should retain its IVs as those are its "genes." I think Defense and the Special stats have a chance of being inherited from the opposite gender parent IN GENERATION TWO while speed and attack are randomized. For example, I just bred my growlithe to know flame wheel and crunch at birth, but I only used two growlithe as parents. Would the baby have a chance at being stronger if the opposite gender parent were an arcanine instead? I'm also about to breed eevees. Should I evolve them into, say, vaporeon so that the baby can possibly inherit its higher defense and specials (compared to other eevee evolutions in general) and become a stronger than normal flareon?
What I'm asking in short is, as far as inheriting Individual values goes, does the level of evolution of a pokemon parent of any given evolutionary line matter? Only answer if you know what you are talking about. Please don't just guess.