Node: parentNode property

The read-only parentNode property of the Node interface returns the parent of the specified node in the DOM tree.

Document and DocumentFragment nodes can never have a parent, so parentNode will always return null. It also returns null if the node has just been created and is not yet attached to the tree.

Value

A Node that is the parent of the current node. The parent of an element is an Element node, a Document node, or a DocumentFragment node.

Example

js
if (node.parentNode) {
  // remove a node from the tree, unless
  // it's not in the tree already
  node.parentNode.removeChild(node);
}

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-node-parentnode①

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also