"Parents" includes poems about the writers' mothers, fathers, or both - their lives and their attitudes. Some of the poems celebrate good relationships, others explore complex or damaging ones. There are poems about parents aging and some about the reactions to their deaths. More specifically, a few of the writers focus on the experiences of parents (some of them refugees) in World War Two and in subsequent conflicts. The poems, by such writers as Jane Duran, U. A. Fanthorpe, Dorothy Nimmo, Carole Satyamurti, Anne Stevenson and Susan Wicks, are in a variety of styles and tones: angry, loving, reflective, conversational, passionate, humorous.