Don't forget Mrs Ohtori!

I think the lack of parental prescence in-series is to affect the duelists more - there is no way they could ask their parents for advice so their neurosis builds up. Also, Ohtori is about the distinction between adults and children, the transistion between these two stages. Perhaps parents aren't shown because teenagers feel that no adult/authority figure understands them (and yet they want to become adults themselves - they want to be taken seriously), and the literal absence of parents in the SKUniverse represents the isolation of the teens during this process?

Forgive me if I'm talking nonsense - it's really late here...

Definitely the students live in dorms for the most part, but it's nice to know that there's a basis in real life for this. Kind of like a boarding school, huh?

Touga and Nanami's parents... at best, they're absentee parents, if not actively abusive. It makes sense that we wouldn't see them; Touga's actions are based on abandonment issues at the very least, as is Nanami's brother complex. She wouldn't be so attached to him if she'd had any other guidance or protection. So I think they get a pass on that-- your theory works.

satyreyes wrote:

They also appear to be very rich and very status-conscious.  They can hardly have their prize pigs living in a dormitory with the rabble, or in some shabby apartment development.  They could have bought a big house in Yokohama just for Touga and Nanami.

This is a distinct possibility. I'd always thought that Nanami and Touga were expected to throw extravagent black tie parties just for their fellow students. I think that 'prize pigs' describe them very well and in more ways than just one.

Flah wrote:

Surely you mean prize cattle? At least in one case.

Yes. 

Downside: so much for the Deliverance joke.