First of all you should be using strict & warnings (I Think you are not) as you are not declaring your variables with 'my' or 'our'

Anyway, Something like t his might work for you.

my %families = (
    flintstones => {
        father    => "fred",
        mother    => "willma",
        kid       => "bambam",
    },
    simpsons => {
        father    => "homer",
        mother    => "marge",
        kid       => "bart",
    },
);

print getfamily(\%families,'bart','kid');

sub getfamily {
    my ($families,$member,$type) = @_;
    foreach my $family ( keys %{ $families } ) {        
        while ( my ($status,$name) = each %{ $families{$family} } ) {
            if ( $status eq $type && $member eq $name ) {
                return $family;
            }
        }
    }
    
    return undef;
}

[download]

Update: Modified code to account for status as per bobf replay.

I'll leave it to the OP to choose what he wants to do with duplicates.

In reply to Re: Finding hashes in hashes of hashes by ahmad
in thread Finding hashes in hashes of hashes by cyphy

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