No, if you want to update your current theme, creating child theme is recommended way. So if you have Parent theme and a child theme, you have to modify the child theme. You don’t have to do anything with parent theme, modify child theme and you should activate the child theme to see the changes.
A child theme is a copy of your parent theme + updates or modification you have made. It helps you to keep up your changes as it is when your parent theme gets updated to new version.
So, just activate the child theme and modify itself. Nothing to do with parent theme.
Hi rjr333,
Please go through the link https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
If you want to edit any template then copy it from child theme and paste it on the same level it was in the parent theme and then edit it in the child theme. In this way, on your theme updation, you will not lose the changes you made. If you will edit the template directly in the parent theme then on next theme update you will lose them.
Thanks
