Parentage is where you come from on your parents’ side: who they were, which country or people they belonged to, and what kind of family that was — rich or poor, important or ordinary. People use it when the family line itself is the point, not how anyone raised a child. You meet it in books and careful speech: “of noble parentage,” “of unknown parentage.” The second often means only that nobody wrote the parents’ names down, not that there is a great secret. Though actually, in everyday talk most people say background or “where her family is from”; parentage feels a little old and formal. It looks backward, at the family you were born into. It is not parenting (the daily work of looking after children) and not parenthood (the state of being a mum or dad).