Custom Resolver missing nested object values

[HellFirePvP]

Hey, i'm uncertain how to properly phrase the question/title.
So i have a larger Datastructure and i have a entrypoint into it via a custom resolver such as listEntries(name: xyz, year: 2000) that then returns entries. That works. However, when i try to extend my result via a query like this:

listEntries(name: xyz) {
    id,
    name,
    parent {
        name,
        value
    }
}

However, it seems that it doesn't resolve the 'parent' at all. Any value inside it is null, suggesting the object is not joined to the result at all. In my resolver i just create a query with Eloquent's syntax Entry::query()->select('entry.*')->join(parent)->where parent year = given year and then return the result via query->get() from the resolver. Am i missing something? Do i somehow have to manually join all tables i want the resolver result to ever potentially be returned from the graphql query?

I'm also more or less forced to use custom resolvers for all resolvers and such, because the underlying permissions logic will work on the individual models if they should be visible to the logged-in user or not, in addition to permissions based on the queries themselves.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or thoughts.

[spawnia]

Does joining parent make such a property available on your Entry instance, does $entry->parent work in PHP code? That is essentially what Lighthouse does when you do not specify another resolver for a field.

[HellFirePvP]

Does this work through the defined Associations?
The Entry-model has a parent() function with return $this->belongsTo(Parent::class), the actual column in the database being called parent_id.

Pardon if i'm not fully asking the right questions either as i'm somewhat new to Eloquent & Laravel itself.

[spawnia]

I would recommend to not use joins and to leverage relations instead.