gods, Ned Stark is such an emo dad.
Ned was overall a good parent, but he definitely suffers some PTSD from the trauma early in his life and the pressure of having to keep a secret from his wife and best friend. Just from Robert’s Rebellion:
His sister is kidnapped and as far as he knows maybe raped.
His father and brother are brutally murdered.
The king calls for his death.
He has to lead a rebellion.
He witnesses the bloody remains of Elia and her children.
He holds his sister as she dies and makes him promise to keep her child safe.
He stains his honor and lies to his wife and disrespects their marriage by claiming Jon as his bastard and insisting on keeping him close.
It’s really palpable in Ned’s AGOT chapters just how much the specter of dead children, his promise to Lyanna, and that what whole year still hangs over him. He reacted to all that trauma by dissociating and distancing, and those are largely where his parenting issues stem from: he doesn’t want his children to have to be hit by the world like he was, and thus doesn’t quite prepare them for things are heading.
On the whole he really is a good parent, but he has blindspots: leaving the girls to Catelyn, keeping Jon uncertain of his place, not preparing all of the starklings for the war ahead.