Being well off doesnt mean you can throw your career, look at it he is divorced with two kids. And the mom also has one kid they r now together but u cant take it granted. Also at any point of life you may lose your job you may die etc. Imagine she quit her job and new husband died or left them what will she do? You may say no problem she can work again but that doesnt work like that. I understand your concern for the kids but sometimes there is nothing do to and its so common to have babysitters. My sister and her husband both working they may live while one of them quit but they may lose their daughter's future bc of it. So they r sacrificing her baby years (2 year old) to make her life better later on. Its the same in this story. My sister is a teacher and husband is a soldier both of them bound by government. In the story kids asking "when will you leave" doesnt sound pleasent but its natural to hear that for kids being with babysitters and they r asking that to know it early to not get hopes for nothing. I may be talking like that but honestly i dont want to make baby if i wont be well off enough to not go to work and stay at home. Bc i think it would be better if both parents are present during the kids growth, its the optimal situation and i want to achieve that. Otherwise i wont make one its this simple.
And yet doesn't mean that because of that constant fear of a hypothetical future you can throw away your time with your kids, they're well off, they don't have to work AS much to make ends, have a decent life, pay for school, etc, yet they chose to still work well into the night, spend nights in hotels instead of their own home and implicitly deny the warmth and safety a kid their age searches in their parents, also no one, absolutely, no one lives with a constant fear that their partner will die unexpectedly, as an excuse to prioritize work forever over children, life doesn't work like that, you don't live life assuming worst case scenarios for everything you do to not take action or accountability.
They could've made an agreement as married coworkers that one of them goes early to their home and do something for their kids but they didn't, they're workaholics, they love their job more than they love spending time with their kids to ensure they grow up fine, because they have babysitters taking care of them so they assume they will be fine but they weren't fine as shown by their reaction when meeting their step-brother, they already expected abandonment.
If they were single parents, if they were barely making ends each month, if one of them was unable to fulfill their adult responsibilities by sickness or something then it would be understandable, but no, they're both able, they both have health and time, they both chose to work instead of proper parenting, they both suck for allowing their older son to take on THEIR role because he found it unacceptable to repeat a cycle of pain, they both suck for proposing a solution that helps no one, instead of helping the older son adjust his time, ask him about what problems he has, no, they force an ultimatum on him to prove he can take care of the siblings and himself by scoring high, threatening to make them go back to the life they didn't like with babysitters, read again, babysitters, not even themselves, they know the older has problems, yet they don't step back in to be proper parents, they're again trying to shove away the problems because they're so engrossed by work.
They didn't want him to take parenting responsibilities and they won't take them either, it seems even the unnamed step mother who cares for the kids on weekends does more than these 2 ever did for them.
All the people here defending them are just normalizing neglect because they found it common, that society works like that and shit, and this is why kids later grow resentful or distant of their parents, because they didn't connect with them as young, they don't expect connection later when they're "available", they grow rebelious earlier and longer, they get the warmth from others, like their brother or friends since they can't get it from absent parents.
