Re: I wish parent sims actually treated kids like their kids
I think a lot of that is driven by the lack of time for it. Time runs so fast in The Sims that if you build a large home it can take 4 hours to get ready for work in the morning because of walk time being so long. Do sims have time to have any meaningful contact? NRAAS had a mod to slow it down for Sims 3, but I couldn't figure out the cheats in Sims 4 to slow it down.
Many of the interactions are pretty oversimplistic - you have 10 different options that all do the same thing, are treated the same other than perhaps there is an issue of whether the other sim is interested in the topic. They don't have family time or anything like that. You have an amicability bar and a lust bar for relationships with anyone. There is some depth from relationship bits but you don't really notice those effects in game. But it seems to work because you don't have time to do anything more. You often cannot even get them to soak in a hot tub together as one of them will randomly get out after 2 minutes of game time. You try to sit and talk together during dates and it is difficult to get them both to stay seated.
They would have to slow things down to give you the type of depth you are looking for.