Volume 1, Children and Parenting, considers parenthood as a functional status in the life cycle: Parents protect, nurture, and teach their progeny, even if human development is more dynamic than can be determined by parental caregiving alone. Volume 1 of the Handbook of Parenting begins with chapters concerned with how children influence parenting. Notable are their more obvious characteristics, like child age or developmental stage; but subtler ones, like child gender, physical state, temperament, mental ability, and other individual-differences factors, are also instrumental. The chapters in Part I, on Parenting across the Lifespan, discuss the unique rewards and special demands of parenting children of different ages and stages - infants, toddlers, youngsters in middle childhood, and adolescents-as well as the modern notion of parent-child relationships in emerging adulthood, adulthood, and old age. The chapters in Part II, on Parenting Children of Varying Status, discuss common issues associated with parenting children of different genders and temperaments as well as unique situations of parenting adopted and foster children and children with a variety of special needs, such as those with extreme talent, born preterm, who are socially withdrawn or aggressive, or who fall on the autistic spectrum, manifest intellectual disabilities, or suffer a chronic health condition.