From what I've read there is no first-parent selector, but is there a way to mimic this functionality? (Please do not suggest JQuery, I already know I can do this with JQuery). I need a purely CSS way of doing this.

CSS has no scripting capabilities. if the property does not exist in the specification you can't refer to it.

However, why do you need jquery?

"element.parent" or "this.parent" will suffice.

I never said I wanted to use JQuery I said don't suggest it (really this would include javascript as well). I wanted a purely CSS way of grabbing the parent element for use in a CSS selector, which is why I said "purely CSS".

After much research I have come to the conclusion that this is not possible and will have to do what I need in a different way.

There is no ":first-parent" selector, but there is a ":first-child" selector. For instance:

div:first-child {
   /* Your CSS styles */
}