The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 11 letter word PALINDROMES
I've seen this crossword clue in The Daily Telegraph
P
A
L
I
N
D
R
O
M
E
S
More clues leading to the result PALINDROMES
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Mum and dad, perhaps" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case mum and dad, perhaps = palindromes.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does PALINDROMES mean?
PALINDROMES noun- A word, phrase, number or any other sequence of units which has the property of reading the same forwards as it does backwards, character for character, sometimes disregarding punctuation, capitalization and diacritics.
- (by extension) A poetic form in which the sequence of words reads the same in either direction.
- A stretch of DNA in which the sequence of nucleotides on one strand are in the reverse order to that of the complementary strand