The death of a parent is one of the most severe traumas that a child can suffer. The unexpected loss of a mother or father not only entails emotional and psychological distress for the orphaned child, but parents are no longer present to provide their offspring with love, support, nurturing, values, information and discipline. The loss of a productive household member also diminishes the financial resources available for continued investments in child health and education. This paper investigates the effect of parental death on investments in child human capital using a panel data set from Indonesia. We find that children with deceased fathers are more likely to drop out of school, while children with deceased mothers are less likely to start school and are generally less healthy than non-bereaved children. Controlling for changes in household economic status (consumption) does not substantially reduce the negative effect of parental death on health and educational status. These results suggest that behavioral changes related to the loss of parent’s presence mainly explain the reduction in children’s human capital rather than loss the associated loss in income from parental death. The results provide strong support for the important role of parental presence in the household for raising healthy and well-educated children.