Protective parenting: neurobiological and behavioral dimensions

•Protective parenting is an important but neglected part of parenting.•Infant attachment behavior and protective parenting are complementary phenotypes rooted in evolution, in non-human animals as well as in the human species.•Prenatal protective parenting is visible in intuitive pathogen avoidance during pregnancy.•Oxytocin stimulates protective parenting in mothers.•Protective parenting is a multidimensional construct to be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective.