But what if you wanted to kill just the child and keep the parent running?

From the perspective of the end user, this distinction doesn't make much sense. If I run a command, and then hit ctrl-c, then I want it to kill the command I ran. I just don't care how that command was implemented: whether it was implemented with a single process or a whole tree of them.

(I might appreciate special handling of ctrl-c if the command I ran provides some sort of interactive environment (eg a command line text editor). That would probably need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.)

Many annoying things. Even the weather is abysmal today. Grr.

This post was brought to you by the adjectives "grumpy" and "wet".