I noticed that the text_content() method of lxml.html elements returns a _ElementUnicodeResult, i.e. a 'smart' string. However, its getparent(), attrname are None, and is_tail, is_text, is_attribute are False. This is the case even if the element contains a single text node. The XPath "string()" used in text_content()'s implementation never returns an existing text node, but always a new string. Wouldn't it make more sense for text_content() to return a normal str? E.g. by adding smart_strings=False to _collect_string_content. I am not aware of any real issues caused by text_content() returning a 'smart' string -- for example, I don't think it can cause any memory leaks, because it doesn't seem to have a reference to the original document. But it still seems unexpected and perhaps unintentional. In theory this might be a breaking change, if anyone expects elem.text_content().getparent() to exist and return None. But https://lxml.de/lxmlhtml.html doesn't mention that text_content() returns a 'smart' string. 'Smart' strings are only documented at https://lxml.de/xpathxslt.html. Given lxml 6.0.0 is in the works, now seemed like a good time to suggest this change. Thanks for reading, and thank you for all your work on lxml. Tomi