Parent-child node relationship without using taxonomy? I'd like to be able to offer sub-site maintainer's the ability to create their own sections of content. I can use a hierarchical taxonomy tree to force multiple levels of content to be classified at different depths of the site. However, I'd rather not be on the hook for revising custom nested term lists for each maintainer. 

Is there an easy way to allow publishers to create parent node &lt;-> child node relationships without relying on taxonomy revisions?

I'm using Drupal 7 and Node Hierarchy is unfortunately not yet out of development for D7.
You can use Entity Reference module. 

You create two content types: Parent and Child. 

in Child content type, add an mandatory "Entity Reference" field that reference to a Parent node.