Parent and child elements.

I'm still pretty new to this, but I think that a parent element refers to any element that has descendants-that is, elements below it that are further indented. These further indented elements are called "children" if I remember correctly. If this is correct, then we actually use parent and child elements all of the time when designing websites. For example, if we have this code:

<ul class="nav">
  <li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>

Then the ul element is the parent, with the list items (li) being children, which in turn are the parent elements of the anchor (a) tags. I think parent and children are just terms to describe this sort of relationship, not actual HTML elements with tags. The styling of parent elements (like the ul in this example) often impacts that of child elements (the list items and links). Does that make sense?

You'll find yourself using them a lot once you start designing sites on a regular basis. I use them a lot to target nav list items and things like that. You definitely need to understand how they work. Having a good grasp on targeting parent child elements will also help you to understand nesting in Sass etc.

Thanks for the replies. I do understand the parent child elements. I guess which will lead me into another question. Watching the video of the nth type stuff. Do those get used a lot? It seems like defining an ID or Class would be more useful and easier than diving into the nth. Looking at websites and checking the development tools. I don't think I have seen one website use the nth type. If anyone has a link to site which use the nth type would be great so I could see how it is applied.