As a programmer, I use the term parent/ child literally every day to refer to an object which is part of, or belongs to, another object. It's a neutral [...] computer term.
Just looking in what I have in my bookcases [†], I can find the centuries-established English word "
child" [‡], meaning, i.a., a "
descendant", used as a "
computer term" in the phrase "child process", in the
1984 computing cult-classic by Brian W. Kernighan & Rob Pike:
The UNIX Programming Environment (p. 35, with detail on p. 222). That dates back
33 years, which I suspect was before some of CathInfo's Flat-Earthers, especially those posting in
text-message style, were even
born!
It's a [...] unoffensive computer term.
Or it
should be so. Either
inoffensive, which would be the customary adjactive, but recognizing that the uncustomary "
unoffensive" (as quoted) indicates a
neutral instead of a contrary sense. In what was plainly a
computing context, it never occurred to me to react to either alternative in any other way.
Ironically, it was the
indignation expressed by C.I.'s
Flat-Earth snowflakes which drew my attention to them long enough for me to recall the phrase "
children's table", with its self-evident meaning, from seating assignments for the festive
dinner that's central to such U.S. holidays as Thanksgiving.
Hmmm.-------
Note †: "In my bookcases" as distinct from even-older published works boxed-up in off-site storage. Whence I could retrieve the even more broadly recognized
1968 computing classic by Donald Knuth:
The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP)
Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, 1st edition, xxi+634pp. That dates back
49 years. Altho' Knuth might've used the analogous set of Germanic terms "father", "son", and "brother", or the set of Latinate "ancestor" and "
descendant" plus the Anglosaxon "sibling".
Note ‡: Anglosaxon "
cild", where A.S. "
c" is pronounced approximately as the "ch" in modern-Eng. "church".