Human infant development is a nonlinear, dynamic, and complex process inherently embedded within the surrounding physical and social environment. During the first thousand days from conception, newborns become infants and later children. Through continuous interactions with their environment, they construct meanings about themselves, others, and their connections. Parenting — including caregiving gestures, thoughts, and emotional states — forms a unique and critical part of this environment. Infants are particularly sensitive to these interactions, which serve both as a regulatory buffer and a transducer for meaning-making. I refer to this proximal parenting environment as the parentome, emphasizing its connection to omics-related mechanisms through which infant-environment interactions become embedded in the developing phenotype — day by day, year by year.

Recent advances in psychobiological and neuroscientific research allow for a fine-tuned, multi-layered understanding of the mechanisms by which the parentome shapes human development. In my talk, I will focus on selected mechanisms: from behavioral epigenetic regulation triggered by prenatal or neonatal stress to autonomic system coupling during smartphone-induced interference in mother-infant interaction; from multisensory exchanges during parent-child object exploration to early inter-brain synchrony during face-to-face interaction.

Finally, I will explore the implications of parentome science for educational and clinical settings, particularly for infants and parents facing developmental health and well-being risks. Together, these findings suggest that humans are highly susceptible — perhaps even fragile — in response to environmental stimuli, and that human-to-human connection is the key resource for fostering development and psychological well-being. Parents — and caregivers in general — are not merely a set of skills to be trained; they are a space where development unfolds. Cultivating a shared culture of parental care is essential to raise future generations capable of nurturing relationships.