Dead/Absent Parents: Why So Common?

There has been some discussion in the book world lately about the prevalence of absent and/or dead parents in children's literature. In an interesting article in Publishers Weekly called "The Ol' Dead Dad Syndrome," editor and author Leila Sales argues that dead parents in children's literature are not only troublingly common, they can sometimes be symptomatic of lazy writing--after all, it's easier to write a book if you don't have to figure out the main character's relationship with their parents....
More in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-bransford/in-defense-of-deadabsent_b_736998.html

This was a conversation started by Julie Just in April (2010) in an essay in the New York Times Book Review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/books/review/Just-t.html