How do you add different opacities to nested items?

Question

I have two nested items in HTML and I want to give the wrraping one opacity 0.8 and the one inside it opacity 1.
I think I understand why it does not work, but, how can

Answer 1

you could always embrace progressive enhancement and use rgba on your background-colors

// this will only affect the div it's applied to and not it's contents
background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8)