What impacts of her parents' "creative solitude" does the author describe in Chapter 5?

Bechdel describes the isolation of her family, with her parents each pursuing their personal creative pursuits. This, in time, led to the children also pursuing creative pursuits in solitude, but it led to self-sufficiency for the author, as she learned to feed herself at a young age because her parents were often too occupied to bother with caring for the children.