#4100: note that element children are not necessarily present on "start" events.
diff --git a/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst b/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
index cdc774e..b17d510 100644
--- a/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst
@@ -94,6 +94,16 @@
*events* is a list of events to report back. If omitted, only "end" events are
reported. Returns an :term:`iterator` providing ``(event, elem)`` pairs.
+ .. note::
+
+ :func:`iterparse` only guarantees that it has seen the ">"
+ character of a starting tag when it emits a "start" event, so the
+ attributes are defined, but the contents of the text and tail attributes
+ are undefined at that point. The same applies to the element children;
+ they may or may not be present.
+
+ If you need a fully populated element, look for "end" events instead.
+
.. function:: parse(source[, parser])