Parents seem to be either killed off, not mentioned, or mentioned dead in animated/cartoon movies.

This conversation about deaths in animated movies, comes from a person on my Facebook page. They were arguing that movies do not need to kill off a parent in order for the movie to be good. (She saw How to Train Your Dragon 2).

This then sparked a conversation about how most animated movies, tend to not really include parents significantly in movies.
To just name a few movie examples of movies in which the one or both parents are killed off:
The Lion King (Mufasa's death still makes me cry)
Nemo
BAMBI!
The Fox and the Hound
Lilo and Stitch
Frozen
Tarzan
The Land Before Time
How to Train your Dragon 2
Shrek 2
Anastasia
etc. 

The list goes on when you think about parents not being mentioned at all or are mentioned dead as well such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin...

Overall, it kind of makes me wonder why movie studios choose to do this. Maybe its because without the parents, the child is forced to grow up and movies in which people grow up and learn who they are suppose to be , tend to be popular.