Duplicating objects changes their parent to random path

[Gerynattos]

Duplicating is a bit painful. Because when I duplicate an object, its parent changes to a random layer object, not the original parent of the object.

Weird thing is that even if I lock all other layers, the duplicated object is still placed there.

[Triffen]

I think duplicated object is always either one level up, or the top level. I confirm that this is happening, and it's very undesirable.
Combined with Transform resetting, it often means that the duplicated object 'disappears', because it's now in the far corner, and can be tiny.