title: is there any way to access the parent component instance in React?
body: <p>I know it's not a functional approach to be able to do something like <code>this.parent</code> in a React component, and I can't seem to find any properties on a React component instance that lead to the parent, but I'm just looking to be able to do some custom things where I need this. </p>
  
  <p>Before anyone wastes their time explaining it's not the functional React "way," understand that I need this because of the following I'm trying to achieve:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Build a transpiler for Meteor's Spacebars templating engine, whose rendering model does take into consideration parent components/templates.</strong> </p>
  
  <p>I've already built a transpiler that modifies the output jsx to achieve this. I do this by passing in <code>parent={this}</code> in all child components composed. However, after the fact it occurred to me that maybe I simply don't know of something that will give me a way to access the parent component instance <em>without additional transpilation modifications</em>.</p>
  
  <p>Any tips would be much appreciated. </p>