* There is no such thing as the "parent" object. Perhaps this is the root
of your confusion.
* Nadeem was quoting the relevent part of the documentation when he wrote
that "x.clone().getClass() == x.getClass()", and later the documentation
repeats, "this method creates a new instance of the class of this object".
This is the documentation in class Object, so
you should realize the
implication of that: any subclass (direct or indirect) should obey this as well!