Question

How would I go about adding a class only to the li parent that has children?

<ul>
    <li><a href="#">parent</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">parent</a>
    <ul>
        <li>child</li>
        <li>child</li>
    </ul>
</ul>

Answer 1

$('li > *').parent().addClass(...);

or

$('li').has('*').addClass(...);

The first version may be marginally faster if you do:

$('li > :first-child').parent().addClass(...);

…hard to say though without testing.

All of these use fully valid CSS selectors.