I have a classes i) Parent and ii) Child.

Both have only one field: String id;

Parent has been configured for one-to-many relationship with Child.

Entry in HBM:
<set name="children" lazy="true" inverse="true" cascade="all-delete-orphan" >
<key column="parent" />
<one-to-many class="model.Child" />
</set>

The following HQL doesn't cascade deletes:
delete Parent p where p.id = arentId

However, the following code cascades deletes:

Parent p = session.get(Parent, "1");
session.delete(parent);

I have attached my eclipse project also. It is a small one with hardly 5 files.