More efficient way to do parent parent parent etc in jquery

Question

In this script I'm writing, I find myself using .parent() up to seven times in a row to get elements. While this works, it seems like there could/should be an easier way to do this/ function I'm unaware of. Any ideas other than more specific classes/ids on more elements?

Basically, my question boils down to accessing the div with id outer when I have a reference to the span with id 'innerSpan' in the html below:

<div id='outer'>
    <a href="some_url">
        <span id="inner">bla bla</span>
    </a>
</div>

Answer 1

The jQuery parent() and parents() methods return the elements which are ancestors of the DOM.
HTML.

parent() Method	parents() Method
It returns only an element that is the direct parent.	It returns all elements that are ancestors to the selected element