Clears everything (text, attributes and children) from the parsed parent
    or named element.

def clear_element(parent_to_parse, element_path=None):
    """
    Clears everything (text, attributes and children) from the parsed parent
    or named element.
    """

    element = get_element(parent_to_parse, element_path)

    if element is None:
        return parent_to_parse
    else:
        element.clear()

    return element