I am writing many (20+) parent child datasets to the database, and EF is requiring me to savechanges between each set, without which it complains about not being able to fig
Since they're all new items rather than
itemTrackingID = addItemTracking.ItemTrackingID,
you could go with
addItemTracking.InventoryTransaction = addInventoryTransaction;
(or whatever the associated navigation property is) and pull the _context.SaveChanges() out of the loop entirely. Entity Framework is very good at inserting object graphs when everything is new. When saving object graphs containing both new and existing items setting the associated id is always safer.