# :parent Selector

Categories: Selectors > Content Filter | Selectors > jQuery Extensions

## parent selector

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

Description: Select all elements that are the parent of another element, including text nodes.

This is the inverse of `:empty`.

One important thing to note regarding the use of `:parent` (and `:empty`) is that child elements include text nodes.

The W3C recommends that the `<p>` element have at least one child node, even if that child is merely text (see http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-P). Some other elements, on the other hand, are empty (i.e. have no children) by definition:`<input>`, `<img>`, `<br>`, and `<hr>`, for example.

### Additional Notes:

- Because `:parent` is a jQuery extension and not part of the CSS specification, queries using `:parent` cannot take advantage of the performance boost provided by the native DOM `querySelectorAll()` method. To achieve the best performance when using `:parent` to select elements, first select the elements using a pure CSS selector, then use `.filter(":parent")`.

### Example:

#### Finds all tds with children, including text.

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
      <style>
      td { width:40px; background:green; }
      </style>
      <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
      <table border="1">

      <tr><td>Value 1</td><td></td></tr>
      <tr><td>Value 2</td><td></td></tr>

    </table>
    <script>$("td:parent").fadeTo(1500, 0.3);</script>

    </body>
    </html>

#### Demo: