One of my college roommates once pointed out that there seem to be a lot of books with this setup–probably because it makes for parents who can be a bit absent-minded and have irregular schedules, so the kids can be off having adventures. Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik and Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Stanley family come to mind. I can also think of Stranger With My Face by Lois Duncan, and I know there was at least one other that I read in a Children’s Lit class (possibly Wait Till Helen Comes, but I’d have to check on that). Can anyone think of any other examples?
I find myself in nearly this situation now, as an occasional freelance artist with a husband who’s adjunct faculty at the local community college. I guess we should be prepared for our children to have fantastical adventures.
Stoneflight by Georgess McHargue. (Okay, the father’s a high school teacher working on getting a promotion into NYC schools administration, and the wife’s more of an interior designer, but she wanted to be an artist.)
Funny thing is, my first thought of a YA-book family is the dad being a physicist and the mom a biologist, to the extent that I have a hard time thinking of anything else.
I guess L’Engle left a pretty big impression on me.
One of the families in Swallows and Amazons has a dad who’s a professor of Archeology, and a mum who’s an (amateur?) artist; the Callums. The parents don’t actually appear at all though, so far as I remember- the kids are always being looked after by other people while the parents are overseas or busy.