Editorial: Parenthood from biology to relation. Prevention, assessment and interventions for developmental and clinical issues

Parenthood represents a fundamental construct that identifies the quality of early adult-infant interactions. In both short and long periods, relationships, as primary interactional experiences, have an essential role in influencing individual's adjustment and psychopathology development during in lifetime. In this scenario, the most important areas of interest and innovation are (a) parents' representation of themselves, both in relation to the child and to their care-giving role; (b) the quality of a couple's relationship, in terms of both conjugal and co-parental bounds, and its influence on the quality of early mother-father-child interactions; (c) the early models of caregiver-baby interaction; (d) the recent approach to the \u201cmaternal brain,\u201d that represents the contribution coming from neurosciences, linked to the adult's activation and cerebral functioning processes, in association with the parental role. These data are a starting point for the individuation of functioning mechanisms and developmental trajectories of parenting in groups of adults and babies, belonging to normative populations. At the same time, those studies may provide an important introduction to the detection of critical and/or dysfunctional aspects in population of babies and adults at risk (e.g., preterm babies, adopted children, etc.) or in adults' clinical group (e.g., a depressed parents, addicted parents, etc.) or in children with one or more impaired characteristic (e.g., children with organic diseases, with autistic disorders, etc.). The present Research Topic puts the attention on these themes, particularly, considering the possible aftermaths that empirical research may have on planning and realizing interventional models to support the parental functioning. We are pleased to publish the contributions of 129 international authors that produced 31 articles, from theoretical review to perspective, from case report to original research issues. The great interest for this topic has made us particularly encouraging in exploring and studying, more and more, the prevention and support to parenting and, also, the specific manners of taking on the therapeutic responsibility of the adult-infant relationship. The topic focuses both on theoretical and empirical perspective, permitting the individuation of methods of observation and assessment, allowing to plan and realize prevention programs and/or interventions, primarily focused on parental support, both in the early stadium of the child's development and in the long-term period. A particular importance was given to integrative research, which combines different approaches and methods: especially, interactive and/or representational aspects, including data from neuroimaging studies, physiological correlates, and biological data related to parenting. The intercultural aspect care-system between adult(s) and child, as well as review papers on avant-garde themes in this research areas, were also included