Kids are made to care. I don't remember my graduation from grade school being a big deal -- I certainly don't remember having a ceremony and I doubt that there was any sort of fanfare surrounding it. This June I went to the neighbor's 5th grade graduation and it lasted as long as my high school graduation in the early 90s. Not saying it's wrong, but it's a shift in our values as a culture. Part of it is that parents, especially dads, are expected to be more engaged in their kids' lives than their fathers were. But I think that part of it also plays into the whole helicopter-parent trend, making a big deal of out achievements that everyone should reasonably be expected to attain.

On the other hand, those milestones are surely not the only time that this father missed with his daughter, they were the symptoms of a larger problem, so I'm not sure it's really relevant.