Animating parent object without affecting child

Is it possible to animate a parent object without affecting any child object? For example I have a cube as the parent and within it I have several things attached. When I got to animate the cube ie its rotation it also changes the rotation of all child objects, is there a way to stop this? Edit: Forgot to mention that I still want to change the childs position with the parent however just not the rotation, so is there a way to "lock" a curve in the parent animation.