Miss, not ma'am
Why was this trope launched? The only way to do justice to the idea behind it is to acknowledge that a lot of its appearances in media are based on a very common and painful circumstance. If we are to acknowledge that this trope exists without exploring its effects and real-life subtext, kind of defeats the purpose of the media pieces, as that's apparently the conversation they were intended to start. Stopping short of that seems provocative and stifling.
This list can even encourage more of this type of behavior.
Edited by tyrekecorrea
Miss, not ma'am
As long as we're going to disallow real-life accounts of this trope, it's important to recognize that fiction's treatment of it differs from its real-life counterpart anyway.
If all we see of any character in fiction is what's covered in a media work, isn't it possible that our seeing little of a given character's non custodial parent is simply a matter of our not getting a look at any potential interactions parent and child might have had offscreen?
The difference between fiction and real life in this regard is that life doesn't just happen when the cameras are on. Since it's more difficult to provide an account of what happens to a fictional character offscreen, we don't get a complete picture of the extent of the non-custodial parent's presence. What may result is the misrepresentation of the extent to which a parent is willing or able to support his or her child, and by extension, a misrepresentation of non-custodial parents as a group.
There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between Type I one and Type II; it seems like Buster's dad fits both.