Hi Christian,

1) I find the best practice is to make everything a package. This allows you to change distribution methods in the future and still use the same packages for deployment. (i.e. Munki or DeployStudio) YMMV

2) Not sure about parental controls

3) Yes, use four different createLionUser packages to create 4 different accounts. However, createLionUser doesn't generate a home folder for you, that is left to the OS. So, if you want to deploy four different home folders, this is my suggestion:
a) configure four createLionUser packages for your users. Configure each package with a custom UID (501, 502, 503, 504)
b) Create four accounts on a test Mac using the packages, configure home folders as you want.
c) Use a packaging tool (iceberg, composer) to create a package of each of the home folders (this is where it gets tricky). Remove temp files, and other cruft you don't need.
d) Make sure your packages install the home folders with the correct permissions (user 1 uses UID 501, etc.)
e) Add to instadmg
f) have a coffee

If someone has a better solution, hopefully they will post it. Now, if you have a directory service like Open Directory or a tool like Munki, you could do a lot of centralized management of home folder configuration for users. I'm just not sure of your complete setup, so the above solution should work for anyone without any centralized services.

Good luck!
Rusty