# Child Selector (“parent > child”)

Categories: Selectors > Hierarchy

## child selector

#### version added: 1.0jQuery('parent > child')

- parent
    Any valid selector.
  child
    A selector to filter the child elements.

Description: Selects all direct child elements specified by "child" of elements specified by "parent".

As a CSS selector, the child combinator is supported by all modern web browsers including Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 7 and above, but notably not by Internet Explorer versions 6 and below. However, in jQuery, this selector (along with all others) works across all supported browsers, including IE6.

The child combinator (E > F) can be thought of as a more specific form of the descendant combinator (E F) in that it selects only first-level descendants.

> Note: The `$("> elem", context)` selector will be deprecated in a future release. Its usage is thus discouraged in lieu of using alternative selectors.

### Example:

#### Places a border around all list items that are children of <ul class="topnav"> .

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
      <style>
    body { font-size:14px; }
    </style>
      <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>

    <ul class="topnav">
        <li>Item 1</li>
        <li>Item 2
            <ul><li>Nested item 1</li><li>Nested item 2</li><li>Nested item 3</li></ul>
           </li>
        <li>Item 3</li>
    </ul>

    <script>$("ul.topnav > li").css("border", "3px double red");</script>

    </body>
    </html>

#### Demo: