History Main / ThereAreNoAdults

* There literally are no adults in ''Literature/ShadesChildren'', with one highly technical exception. The kids are forced to wage their guerrilla war in a post-apocalyptic world alone.

* ''Literature/TheFireUsTrilogy'' follows a band of kids a while after a virus (which is, of course OnlyFatalToAdults) has rampaged the town. Unable to remember their names before hand, they have christened themselves with their jobs ('Mommy', 'Teacher', 'Hunter'. It appears the older children have renamed the younger children arbitrarily. 'Doll', 'Baby', 'Action Figure').

* Although it's averted in the main series, ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirls'' plays this straight with the human world -- aside from Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna, the only other adults are cameos with no effect on the plot (Granny Smith, Cheerilee, and Mr. & Mrs. Cake). The absolute lack of parents is puzzling; the total absence of law enforcement [[spoiler:after a flying fire demon demolishes the front of the high school]] totally boggles the mind.

* The ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'' games technically have adults, and some of the heroes are over 18, but there are an awful lot of characters, notably Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles, who have no legal parents or guardians, and seem to live entirely on their own. The only character with a known parent is six-year old Cream and her mother Vanilla.

* ''Series/ICarly'': Another "older sibling has custody," something that has to be vanishingly rare in real life, but this show is camp bordering on fantasy, so it works.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* Also with very minor exceptions, the movie ''Film/{{Kids}}''.
* A number of teen movies, such as ''Film/DazedAndConfused''. In ''Dazed and Confused'' adults do occasionally impact the story. One couple ends their plans to go on a trip so they can shut down a party that their son was planning on hosting in their house while they were to be gone. Another mother threatenens some seniors with a shotgun when they try to haze her boy. One stoner hypothosizes that the adults are complict or at least apathetic to the strange situation of the local highschool. Randy "Pink" Floyd's entire personal storyline centers around his conflicts with his football coach, who is seen harassing him to sign a "drug-free" pledge, and he and his teammates make fun of him near the end of the movie.

* ''Film/LogansRun'': Specifically [[Literature/LogansRun the book]] had lastday be the 21st birthday. The Movie pushed this up (and avoided DawsonCasting by having lastday become the 30th.
* This trope becomes literal in ''WesternAnimation/JimmyNeutronBoyGenius'', where the entire adult population of Retroville is abducted by aliens.
* Very deliberate in ''Film/FastTimesAtRidgemontHigh''. There are teachers, but no parents.

* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' takes place on a deserted island. The only adults on the boat were killed, leaving only the boys to survive on their own. ''Lord of the Flies'' was a deconstruction of stories where boys had adventures while lost together, showing how the situation can quickly devolve.
* ''Literature/TheGirlWhoOwnedACity'' is a post-apocalyptic story after a OnlyFatalToAdults plague, where children are trying to survive on their own and dealing with issues of suddenly having to watch for infants, etc.

* There literally are no adults in ''Literature/ShadesChildren'', with one highly technical exception. The kids are forced to wage their guerrilla war in a post-apocalyptic world alone.
* Jack Dann's short story "The Marks of Painted Teeth" has teens competing for territory and provisions in a post-apocalyptic setting. They've apparently developed moderate telekinetic powers and a taste for Carl Jung.

* Literature/TheFireUsTrilogy follows a band of kids a while after a virus (which is, of course OnlyFatalToAdults) has rampaged the town. Unable to remember their names before hand, they have christened themselves with their jobs ('Mommy', 'Teacher', 'Hunter'. It appears the older children have renamed the younger children arbitrarily. 'Doll', 'Baby', 'Action Figure').
* The Enemy by Charlie Higson takes place in a world in which all adults have been turned into zombies by a virus.

* ''Series/TheOdyssey'' (a Canadian kids drama) took this to a very literal level. A main character who after receiving a concussion, found himself in a world where there were no adults. This is the start of a journey he makes through this strange land where he encounters weird societies and places while he searches for his Dad (long story; don't ask). With the exception of one episode which ended with a couple of parental arms reaching into view from the edge of the screen and dragging two of the trio away. There was also an [[InvertedTrope inversion]] in an episode where they reached a wall that separated their world from a world of adults, where there were no kids
* This was more or less the whole premise of ''Series/PartyOfFive'' at the outset.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Miri" uses this. Beware the grups!
* New Zealand show ''Series/TheTribe'' has all the adults of the world dying of a mysterious virus.
* ''Series/ICarly'' another "older sibling has custody," something that has to be vanishingly rare in real life, but this show is camp bordering on fantasy, so it works.
* The BBC series ''Series/TheSparticleMystery'' has the adults disappear through a science experiment gone wrong.
* New Zealand seems to have a habit for these kinds of shows because aside from the hit show ''Series/TheTribe'', it has also produced ''Series/TheNewTomorrow'' and ''Series/TheCulDeSac''. The former being a spin-off of ''The Tribe'' and the latter being an independent sci-fi fantasy show.

* ''Series/TheNewPeople'', a one-season series in 1970, featured a planeful of American students who crash-landed on a Pacific island, killing the pilots and supervisor.[[/folder]]

** Charles Schulz is on record saying that the moment he did introduce adults was a big mistake. This was a series of 1954 Sunday strips involving Lucy competing in an amateur golf tournament while being coached by Charlie Brown. [[spoiler: She has to withdraw and go home or miss her bedtime, even though she was winning.]] The adults make up the gallery, and are drawn more or less realistically, which doesn't remotely work in terms of scale with the regular characters. (Even then, their faces aren't shown.) The strips appear in the 1953-1954 volume of ''The Complete Peanuts'' anthology, the first time they've been reprinted.

* ''VideoGame/BackyardSports'' features no adults whatsoever across the franchise. Played with by famous celebrities or sports stars that appear as [[GuestFighter guest athletes]], who are aged down to fit with the all-children cast.
* Originally in ''VideoGame/RuleOfRose'' there are whole two adults and one sixteen-year old in the Rose Garden Orphanage supervising over twenty children, and by the end they all have mysteriously dissappeared without anyone from the outside noticing, leaving the orphans to their own devices.
* You never see any adults in ''VideoGame/HighSchoolStory''. Occasionally one shows up for plot-related reasons, but you always hear about it second-hand from other students telling you what the adult said or wants. Then again, [[AdultsAreUseless they're pretty useless in the game anyway]].
* Downplayed in ''VideoGame/IMMeen''. Meen and Gnorris are technically adults, but Meen [[PsychopathicManchild acts like a spoiled child]], and Gnorris is a gnome. There are no ''normal'' adults. The two kids are apparently alone and unsupervised at the library.

* Absolutely ''no'' adults appeared on ''WesternAnimation/CleoAndCuquin'', not even the parents of the titular characters and their four siblings.
* In the TV show ''WesternAnimation/MaxAndRuby'', the parents of Max and Ruby were initially never shown, though their grandma sometimes made an appearance. And while she made appearances, she did not live with them. Ruby does all the mother work. Adults did occasionally appear as background characters but the siblings’ parents were consistently [[InvisibleParents nonexistent]]. The stage show "Max & Ruby: Bunny Party" lampshades this with a song that is actually called "Where Are the Parents?" According to the song "They're busy making plans, scrubbing pots and pans / Writing letters, folding sweaters..." and "They're not too far way / They're on the sundeck just to relax / Not too far from Ruby and Max." In the 2010s, the series had a {{retool}} where Max and Ruby's parents became on-screen characters.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", the children all accuse their parents of molestation, getting all of them arrested at once. Naturally, without anyone paying the bills for water, power or even food, the town goes to hell in a few hours.
* This is blatant in ''WesternAnimation/StrawberryShortcake'', especially in the 2003 version where the characters are designed, and act more like real kids than the other versions. In this version, Strawberry Shortcake and Apple Dumpling are sisters, yet no parents are seen or mentioned. Strawberry doesn't look older than eight prior to her aging up however she is in charge of a toddler. Whenever the characters visit places everyone looks under thirteen but despite this they can drive and they hold jobs. An episode involving Strawberry meeting an old friend Lime Lite has some implications that they do have parents somewhere, as we see the two as toddlers in a nursery and later Lime mentions she has to move away without it apparently being her decision, however otherwise nothing suggests adults exist.
* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'':
** Those teens travel all around the world with their talking dog, capturing nut jobs in Halloween costumes. [[ShouldntWeBeInSchoolRightNow Don't they have to go to school (or homeschool)?]] Do their parents care out late they stay out? Do their parents even care about feeding them dinner? Do they even know or care where they are? Apparently not. [[VagueAge Not that it's ever clearly established how old they actually are]] outside of supplementary material. The original reason was that they were a music band traveling around during summer vacation, however that was scrapped in development of the original cartoon and they never bothered to explain where their parents were.
** ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated'', in fact does bring their parents in; they very much do not approve (also, Frank Welker voices Daphne's dad. And he still does Freddy. Don't think about that too much). The final episode of ''Mystery Incorporated'' features the gang going off on a cross-country road trip, in the style of the original series, immediately after graduating high school, which may retroactively justify all the franchise's previous uses of this trope.
* ''Literature/CharlieAndLola'': Though they TALK about "Mum" and "Dad," there's never any sign of them, not even Charlie or Lola reacting to them. For example, in the episode "Charlie is Broken" after Charlie breaks his arm, Marv informs him that his father is coming to help him, only for the scene to suddenly change before his father makes it onto the screen.

* WesternAnimation/JellyJamm. The only adults we ever see are the King and Queen.
* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' had a similar episode, "Misplaced", where a group of evil sorcerers creates two separate worlds, one with adults and no children and one with children and no adults, based on the "World Without Grown-Ups" storyline.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' when Homer and Grampa distribute their "re-vitalizer" to Springfield, adults excuse themselves to their bedrooms, leaving the town children wondering if the grown-ups have become reverse-vampires.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'', a squadron of broccoli-shaped aliens attempts to conquer Townsville by contaminating the broccoli harvest, hypnotizing anyone who consumed the vegetable. This leads to the trope, since all the city's children consider it [[PickyEater too disgusting to eat]].
* ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'' should be mentioned here. In none of the [[WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh original Disney animated shorts]] are parents, with the exception of Kanga, present, however, being a stuffed animal, she might not qualify. However, this is subverted in ''[[WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh The New Adventures]]'', as Christopher Robin's mom, as well as other adults, appear in the animated series. Hell, she, and a theater usher appear in just the very first episode, "Pooh Oughta Be In Pictures". If Kanga applies, then so does Lumpy's mother, deemed "Mama Heffalump", in ''Pooh's Heffalump Movie'', and in ''My Friends Tigger & Pooh''. The original whole ''point'' of Winnie the Pooh was that it was the world Christopher Robin had created to play with his stuffed animals in. He's often away, of course, having other claims on his time, and at the end of the last book he's growing up. It's sort of a precursor to ''Franchise/ToyStory'', only without a real-world context.

* In the short-lived ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Flintstones]]'' spinoff ''WesternAnimation/CaveKids'', a ''WesternAnimation/{{Muppet Babies|1984}}'' or ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}''-esque show focusing on Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's "adventures", their parents were nowhere to be seen.
* ''WesternAnimation/RainbowBrite'': Rainbow Brite and the Color Kids didn't seem to have any parents. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] as they seem to be AmbiguouslyHuman, aside from Rainbow who was a human orphan named "Wisp" once.
* Though there are (if mostly evil or incompetent) adults in the ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' universe, the rumored goal of the apparent KND Splinter Cell was to wipe them all (good and evil alike) out, [[spoiler: however, it turns out to be just cover-up for the KND Galactic branch, [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot much to the ire of some fans.]] ]]

* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'', apparently adults (and teenagers) are not ''allowed'' in [[CrapsaccharineWorld Smileyland]]. The closest thing we get is Stumpy's mother calling him on the phone in one episode.

* ''WesternAnimation/SummerCampIsland'' takes place in a summer camp where all the main characters are children. The camp councillors are teenagers who may-or-may-not be legally adults (Susie turns fifteen mid-series, [[spoiler:but she's actually over a century old]], and the other councillors seem the same age as her).

* ''VideoGame/BackyardSkateboarding''

* ''Massacre at Central High'' is about a high school student who goes on a crusade to kill his school's bullies, and supposedly an influence on ''Film/{{Heathers}}''. No adults appear in the entire film.

** ''Kid Nation'' had a British counterpart, the 2009 4-episode miniseries ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_and_Girls_Alone Boys and Girls Alone]]'' in which 20 children aged 8-11 spent two weeks in houses divided by gender with minimal adult oversight. It was even ''worse''. The boys struggled to cook for themselves while subsisting on sugary snacks which led to occasional violence, while the girls formed cliques and verbally abused one another with one expressing suicidal thoughts and being left alone in the bathroom for hours. During the final day they had the girls move in with the boys, which led to worsened tensions. The series was so controversial that the government had to review its child labor laws after receiving ''hundreds'' of complaints.

* ''Series/TheNewPeople'', a one season series in 1970, featured a planeful of American students who crash landed on a Pacific island, killing the pilots and supervisor.[[/folder]]

* ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'' should be mentioned here. In none of the [[WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh original Disney animated shorts]] are parents, with the exception of Kanga, present, however, being a stuffed animal, she might not qualify. However, this is subverted in ''[[WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh The New Adventures]]'', as Christopher Robin's mom, as well as other adults, appear in the animated series. Hell, she, and a theater usher appear in just the very first episode, "Pooh Oughta Be In Pictures". If Kanga applies, then so does Lumpy's mother, deemed "Mama Heffalump", in ''Pooh's Heffalump Movie'', and in ''My Friends Tigger & Pooh''. The original whole ''point'' of Winnie the Pooh was that it was the world Christopher Robin had created to play with his stuffed animals in. He's often away, of course, having other claims on his time, and at the end of the last book he's growing up. It's sort of a precursor to WesternAnimation/ToyStory, only without a real-world context.

* In the short-lived ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Flintstones]]'' spinoff Cave Kids, a WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies or ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}''-esque show focusing on Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's "adventures", their parents were nowhere to be seen.

* No adults appeared in ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy''. The episode "Stop, Look and Ed" entails that the adults are usually at work while the kids are playing and Ed says his dad is very lazy and doesn't do anything but watch TV after work. Later episodes are a little less strict with the rule, showing certain body parts and representing their speech with sound effects, but the only adult to make a full on-screen appearance was [[spoiler:Eddy's brother]].

* In the TV show ''WesternAnimation/MaxAndRuby'', the parents of Max and Ruby were initially never shown, though their grandma sometimes made an appearance. And while she made appearances, she did not live with them. Ruby does all the mother work. Adults did occasionally appear as background characters but the siblings parents were consistently [[InvisibleParents nonexistent]]. The stage show "Max & Ruby: Bunny Party" lampshades this with a song that is actually called "Where Are the Parents?" According to the song "They're busy making plans, scrubbing pots and pans / Writing letters, folding sweaters..." and "They're not too far way / They're on the sundeck just to relax / Not too far from Ruby and Max." In the 2010s, the series had a {{retool}} where Max and Ruby's parents became on-screen characters.

* In the TV show ''WesternAnimation/MaxAndRuby'', the parents of Max and Ruby were initially never shown, though their grandma sometimes made an appearance. And while she made appearances, she did not live with them. Ruby does all the mother work. Adults did occasionally appear as background characters but the siblings parents wee consistently [[InvisibleParents nonexistent]]. The stage show "Max & Ruby: Bunny Party" lampshades this with a song that is actually called "Where Are the Parents?" According to the song "They're busy making plans, scrubbing pots and pans / Writing letters, folding sweaters..." and "They're not too far way / They're on the sundeck just to relax / Not too far from Ruby and Max." In the 2010s, the series had a {{retool}} where Max and Ruby's parents became on-screen characters.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''WesternAnimation/MagicGiftOfTheSnowman'': The land that Princess Electra rules has no adults except for Snowden.

* Taken to extremes in ''WesternAnimation/LittleEinsteins''. Not only do we never see the main characters' parents, there doesn't appear to be any other humans, period.

* ''Literature/CharlieAndLola'': Though they TALK about "Mum" and "Dad," there's never any sign of them, not even Charlie or Lola reacting to them. This is sometimes taken to ridiculous and often frustrating extremes. For example, in the episode "Charlie is Broken". After Charlie breaks his arm, Marv informs him that his father is coming to help him, only for the episode to cut jarringly to another scene. Also, in the episode "I Am Really, Really, Really Concentrating" at the end of the episode, Lola recieves a unique rosette from a teacher for managing to participate in an egg-and-spoon race without her egg falling off her spoon once. She is shown to have recieved this rosette seconds after the race finishes, no teacher in sight to have given it to her.

!!Examples

[[folder:Fan Fic]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* No adults appeared in ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy''. One episode ("Stop, Look and Ed") entails that the adults are usually at work while the kids are playing and Ed says his dad is very lazy and doesn't do anything but watch TV after work. Later episodes are a little less strict with the rule, showing certain body parts and representing their speech with sound effects, but the only adult to make a full on-screen appearance was [[spoiler:Eddy's brother]].

[[/folder]]