Is it bad practice for a child object to have a pointer to its parent?

Question

In a C++ application, let\'s say I have a window class, which has several instances of a control class. If my window wanted to notify a control that it had been clicked, I m

Answer 1

It is OK. However, make sure you need it because it can complicate your code in situations where a childs parent can change. Examine why the child needs to know who its parent is and consider the costs and alternatives. An example alternative for your scenario would be: Resizing can come from the top down when a parents window is resized it can tell its children to resize by iterating and calling a method or setting a property. When a child needs to resize (like a textbox that can grow based on the data in it) it can raise an event to anyone listening saying that it resized and the parent could listen for that event.