- This is pretty common in fairy tales, as a good chunk of the time, the protagonists are are minus a mom, dad, or both, however, they usually get some form of intervention, magical or otherwise.
- In "The One-Handed Girl", both parents die in rapid succession.
- This tends to happen in "Cinderella", as, according to some versions, her mother dies when she's a baby and her father either leaves or dies, regardless, she's left in the care of her Wicked Stepmother.
- Lucy Clifford's "The New Mother" from Anyhow Stories: Moral or Otherwise features a mother who warns her children if they keep misbehaving, she'll have to leave them and they'll get a horrible new mother "with glass eyes and a wooden tail." Well the kids keep misbehaving and come home one day to find their mom's gone, and they now live in the wilderness out of fear of their new mother lurking in the house.
- In "Rapunzel", the titular girl loses her parents when taken by a witch as repayment for her the latter's stolen herbs.
- In "Morozko", the old man's daughter is abandoned in the nearby woods by her father at her stepmother's behest.
- In "Mother Holle", the main character's father dies, leaving her in the care of her abusive stepmother who (mis)treats her as a maid. The own story compares her with "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel").
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ParentalAbandonment/FairyTales
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