Avatar Parents/Parental Figures Tier List
Explanation below the cut:
S tier: Neytiri, Tonowari, and Ronal are all great parents who love and support their children, but also discipline them when needed. None of them hesitate to run into battle to save their kids.
A tier: I put Jake in A instead of S just because of him saying "you've done enough" to Lo'ak when Neteyam died. Was it a realistic and human thing for him to do? Yes. Did it make him a good father? No. He's great otherwise. Norm's also in A because I'm sure he's a great parent, but we don't really see him parent on screen at all. Same with Grace. We know she had a maternal relationship with Neytiri and Tsu'tey and surely would've been a great mother to Kiri, but we never get to see it. Mo'at and Eytukan get A because even though they love their daughters dearly, they still put Neytiri in an arranged marriage with a guy she clearly didn't have romantic feelings for.
B tier: Ka'nat cares about Etuwa a lot, but he also treats her like a child sometimes and doesn't respect her role as tsahik. The way he treated her would be more forgivable if she were the age of Jake's kids, but she's a grown adult. Paz is kind of the true neutral of this chart. She died when Spider was so little, so we never really got any kind of inclination of what kind of parent she would be.
C tier: here are the assholes who do love their kids, but also won't hesitate to throw them under the bus to get what they want. Quaritch loves Spider and protected him from torture/Neytiri, but he also had no problem forcing him to translate while he threatened innocent villagers. The other two are Artsut and Ateyo, Tsu'tey's parents. After Tsu'tey died, they wanted their youngest son, Arvok, to become olo'eyktan instead of Jake, so they gave Arvok a poisoned knife when he challenged Jake to a duel for the title of olo'eyktan. Arvok had no idea about the poison and wanted to duel honorably, but when the poison was discovered, he was also banished alongside his parents.
D tier: I debated back and forth about whether or not to put her in the same category as Quaritch, but eventually decided to put her below him. Quaritch is an awful parent to Spider, but he loves Spider for who he is and does occasionally step up to protect him. Alma only seems to love the Sarentu children for what they can give her: a way to play out her fantasy of being na'vi and a mother. She tried to insert herself in their culture despite them asking her not to, did nothing while they were abused for years and only did something at the last second when she would no longer be in danger of harm from Mercer, didn't bother to check if they were still alive for 15 years, and she lied to them about their real origins for months, knowing how much distress it was causing them.
Mercer tier: Mercer
