Not In My School ( 10)

Not In My School is a weekly feature that throws out one YA lit cliche a week to compare to my own high school days. Because we all know how accurate those fictional nuances are . . .

Dead parents

There appears to be, in YA fiction, a rash of dead parents of high school students.  If one were to believe this cliche, puberty = death to the parental figures, leaving said child to come into the world on their own.  Aside from those of us from broken homes, I didn't know anyone with a dead parent or parents.  That's not to say parents don't die with younger children but I'd like to think they're not dying in droves and MOST kids have at least one biological parental figure around.  Absentee/deadbeat parents is another trope entirely.  I'm just focusing on the purely pulseless here.  I don't think there's a virus or anything.