<pclass="desc"><strong>Description: </strong>Get the parent of each element in the current set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector.</p>
<pclass="arguement"><strong>selector</strong>A string containing a selector expression to match elements against.</p>
</li></ul>
<divclass="longdesc">
<p>Given a jQuery object that represents a set of DOM elements, the <code>.parent()</code> method allows us to search through the parents of these elements in the DOM tree and construct a new jQuery object from the matching elements. The <code>.parents()</code> and <code>.parent()</code> methods are similar, except that the latter only travels a single level up the DOM tree.</p>
<p>The method optionally accepts a selector expression of the same type that we can pass to the <code>$()</code> function. If the selector is supplied, the elements will be filtered by testing whether they match it.</p>
<p>Consider a page with a basic nested list on it:</p>
<pre>
<ul class="level-1">
<li class="item-i">I</li>
<li class="item-ii">II
<ul class="level-2">
<li class="item-a">A</li>
<li class="item-b">B
<ul class="level-3">
<li class="item-1">1</li>
<li class="item-2">2</li>
<li class="item-3">3</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="item-c">C</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="item-iii">III</li>
</ul>
</pre>
<p>If we begin at item A, we can find its parents:</p>
<p>The result of this call is a red background for the level-2 list. Since we do not supply a selector expression, the parent element is unequivocally included as part of the object. If we had supplied one, the element would be tested for a match before it was included.</p>
</div>
<h3>Examples:</h3>
<divid="entry-examples"class="entry-examples">
<divid="example-0">
<h4>Example: <spanclass="desc">Shows the parent of each element as (parent > child). Check the View Source to see the raw html.</span>
