CSS selector - element with a given child

Is it possible to select an element if it contains a specific child element?

Unfortunately not yet.

The CSS2 and CSS3 selector specifications do not allow for any sort of parent selection.

---

A Note About Specification Changes

This is a disclaimer about the accuracy of this post from this point onward. Parent selectors in CSS have been discussed for many years. As no consensus has been found, changes keep happening. I will attempt to keep this answer up-to-date, however be aware that there may be inaccuracies due to changes in the specifications.

---

An older "Selectors Level 4 Working Draft" described a feature which was the ability to specify the "subject" of a selector. This feature has been dropped and will not be available for CSS implementations.

The subject was going to be the element in the selector chain that would have styles applied to it.

_{Example HTML}

<p><span>lorem</span> ipsum dolor sit amet</p>
<p>consecteture edipsing elit</p>

This selector would style the span element

p span {
    color: red;
}

This selector would style the p element

!p span {
    color: red;
}

---

A more recent "Selectors Level 4 Editor’s Draft" includes "The Relational Pseudo-class: :has()"

:has() would allow an author to select an element based on its contents. My understanding is it was chosen to provide compatibility with jQuery's custom :has() pseudo-selector*.

In any event, continuing the example from above, to select the p element that contains a span one could use:

p:has(span) {
    color: red;
}

---

_{* This makes me wonder if jQuery had implemented selector subjects whether subjects would have remained in the specification.}

Update October 2021 - Future feature. It is NOT yet supported by any browser

The :has() pseudo-selector is proposed in the CSS Selectors 4 spec, and will address this use case once implemented.

To use it, we will write something like:

.foo > .bar:has(> .baz) { /* style here */ }

In a structure like:

<div class="foo">
  <div class="bar">
    <div class="baz">Baz!</div>
  </div>
</div>

This CSS will target the .bar div - because it both has a parent .foo and from its position in the DOM, > .baz resolves to a valid element target.

---

Original Answer (left for historical purposes) - this portion is no longer accurate

For completeness, I wanted to point out that in the Selectors 4 specification (currently in proposal), this will become possible. Specifically, we will gain Subject Selectors, which will be used in the following format:

!div > span { /* style here */

The ! before the div selector indicates that it is the element to be styled, rather than the span. Unfortunately, no modern browsers (as of the time of this posting) have implemented this as part of their CSS support. There is, however, support via a JavaScript library called Sel, if you want to go down the path of exploration further.

I agree that it is not possible in general.

The only thing CSS3 can do (which helped in my case) is to select elements that have no children:

table td:empty
{
   background-color: white;
}

Or have any children (including text):

table td:not(:empty)
{
   background-color: white;
}