why is the young woman eating apple pie while the others have coffee cake?
I think you're possibly over-analyzing the picture and crediting the artwork with more detail than it really has. I can only make out one thing - cake.
Why is the older man serving and the younger man doing child care? An attempt to ease the patriarchal "women are second rate" message they have always sent out previously?
The back story is that the young man is the prodigal son who has returned with his new family to meet his parents. They made it past the roaming ghost-lion and celebrated by eating cake. Mmnnn, sweet, sweet cake.
When you have cake and tea you forget about lions roaring outside your window and also fail to notice that the guy who is claiming to be your son is actually black.
It's obviously just an elaborate scam to eat cake.
Cake.