[jQuery] get all children and subchildren

[chitgoks]

how would you write the code to get all children and sub-children that
are of class menu_head and menu_body?
example this would be my html

<p id="header2" class="menu_head">Header-2</p>
                <div id="header2_menubody" class="menu_body">

                        <div id="pane" class="menu_list">
                                <p id="submenu" class="menu_head">Sub-Menu</p>
                                <div id="submenu_menubody" class="menu_body">
                                        <a id="submenu_sublink1" href="#">Sub 
Link-1</a>
                                        <a id="submenu_sublink2" href="#">Sub 
Link-2</a>
                                        <a id="submenu_sublink3" href="#">Sub 
Link-3</a>
                                </div>
                        </div>

                        <a id="header2_link1" href="#">Link-1</a>
                        <a id="header2_link2" href="#">Link-2</a>
                        <a id="header2_link3" href="#">Link-3</a>
                </div>

this was what i tried
 $('#header2').children('.menu_head') and $('header2').children
('.menu_body') but they dont work

if i use $('$header2').children() it will only give me the div with id
"pane"

anyone got ideas? thanks