But parents not getting emphasis in superhero stories as a whole doesn't mean it's up to the Super mythos to pick up the slack, when it was designed with dead Kents in mind since even before we had a superhero genre as we know it. The Kents in the present actually kind of are non-entities anyway, so what is the point of keeping them alive?
It comes off as more championing an idea/trend than actual characters (because as characters they are two dimensional/stretched thin once we get past the origin. After all this time, the two of them combined are not even as interesting as Aunt May on her better written days).
But isn't this kind of scapegoating the idea of the Kents being dead for perceived issued with the New 52 era? Any problems the New 52 featured arguably had little to do with the Kents being there or not. The main issues were the costume, the marriage being gone and the romance with Wonder Woman, all of which would have still gotten negative reactions even if the Kents had been around. Pa Kent was even dead before Flashpoint hit.
I don't know if New 52 had anything as singularly terrible as Grounded, that seems like hyperbole IMO. And we still had 50 years of the Super mythos where the Kents were dead before Byrne came along, and there weren't any issues. Superman was not a tragic (Modern) Batman-like character when that was the case, so where is this belief that he becomes too tragic coming from?
Yeah we need more championing of Jimmy. And in general, more people for Clark to interact with in his adult life than just Lois and his parents and JL teammates outside of his franchise.