**Is there a way in ReactJS for a component to find out who it's parent is?**

### EDIT 1: Regardless of the merits of doing this, is there a way?

I haven't found a React way to do this - from what I can see, the idea is to pass callbacks down to the child from the parent, and the child calls the callback - unaware of the fact that the callback is actually on the parent.

I've tried setting an "owner" property, and that idea seems to work, but I wonder what's the best approach?

e.g.

```
<Parent>
  <Child owner={this}/>
</Parent>

```

Then in the child component, I can do `owner.method`, and it seems to work fine. I know this isn't a true parent/child relationship, but is the closest I've found in my tests.

Some may say that callbacks are a cleaner way of doing this, but the parent/child relationship for some things (e.g. RadioButtonGroup and RadioButton) seems natural and would benefit from knowing this relationship, in my opinion.

### EDIT 2: So it's not possible?

> 
> The thing that I don't like about the idea that it's not supported is
> that HTML can be marked up with zero javascript - and it has implied,
> default functionality - some elements are required to have parents -
> they are defined as children of other elements (e.g. ul and li). This
> can't happen in JSX because if there is interaction between the
> elements - there *has* to be javascript events that bind the
> components together - every single time you use them. Designers can't
> simply write HTML like syntax - Someone has to step in and put some
> javascript bindings in there - which then makes the maintenance
> harder. I think the idea makes sense for overriding default behavior,
> but default behaviors *should* be supported. And defaults would
> require knowing either your parent, or who your owner is.
> 
> 
>