I hope it's okay to make a new post but I had a lot to say that I thought would get lost in the comments of this post and weren't really relevant to it, overall.
@arsenicalbronze said: "I had originally headcanoned that Ben was basically bounced back and forth between his parents in some kind of joint custody agreement because of Emily’s line in the second movie about “someone had to grow up and stay home and take care of Ben”, but your research brings up all kinds of new questions about Ben’s interactions with his parents in the second film!"
The novelization has a great line about how as a kid Ben thought his parents both gave him a lot of freedom but came to realize that they were both just neglecting him to do their own things.
Which I think makes perfect sense cause Ben and Patrick are a lot alike and Ben himself doesn't seem to care much about the personal goings on of those close to him (not going to Riley's book signing, or even bothering to open his book or believe in Riley enough to read the book without being pushed to, the whole fight with Abigail and the fact that he wasn't upset about losing her or ever tried to fix things, he just expected her to agree with him, skipping Sadusky's wake in favor of his dog (you're telling me that Ben Gates can't afford to hire a pet sitter for a day so he can pay his respects to a man who played such a significant role in the biggest moments of his life??? Charlotte wasn't implied to be in grave danger, just a little sick)).
And then Emily was a young mother taking care of Ben and building a career for herself in an academic field and time where she likely did not recieve much respect, so she had to work very hard to get that respect and probably had little time for Ben. If we're using Helen Mirren's age, she was 18/19 when Ben was born (whereas Jon V0ight was 26 but obvs their ages may not correspond to their characters) so she was only in her late 20s/early 30s when she and Patrick divorced. Even if we bump her age up, it's definitely implied that Patrick was her senior and also somewhat of an authority figure in her education "that wasn't love, that was excitement, adrenaline, and tequila. And I was just trying to get course credit!"....😬
Icky, imo. But this could add to the tension between Ben and his father if Ben saw his mother as a victim under those circumstances.
Which I think explains why Ben is such a momma's boy and had to patch stuff up with his dad despite them both neglecting him. 🤷♀️