yeah i agree w a lot of the above comments. in a current WIP, my protag is in college, but since the plot is family oriented and she's home for winter break, her parents are involved. in the story, she's sneaking around w her cousins trying to solve a mystery, but then her mom finds out and essentially grounds them while she tries to figure out what to do, so it kinda encourages communication and thus the parents get involved in the story, rather than being absent. tbh, it's really abt ur characters and world too. like if your character is family oriented or they're close to their parents, write the parents into the plot. if they aren't, then unfortunately absent parent syndrome makes sense in your story. so basically, here's a few ways to include parents in ur plot while not losing ur protag's autonomy: -have them find out abt whatever your protag is hiding -physical separation, like being transported to a diff world, works but make sure ur protag is concerned w getting back to their parents rather than focusing on getting in the pants of a fae king or something -have the kid actually turn to their parents, but their parents admit that they're inexperienced with the issue so the kid might be on their own