The readers of the Journal may not be aware that the Joint Editors act independently in making decisions on accepting papers for publication. This means that as an Editor I am just as intrigued as any other reader when I see a new issue of the Journal since it is likely that I will have been responsible for selecting only one third of the papers in that issue. In reading the material in this present issue I was struck by the conceptual and methodological links between a sub-set of papers that were concerned with adverse events and circumstances and their long-term sequelae; moreover, that these papers had between them some important implications for clinical practice. The first of these papers is by Dunn et al. and investigates the transmission within families of qualities of relationships. They found that father–child and mother–child relationships in stepfamilies, single-parent, and non-stepfamilies were found to be related to a number of factors. These included the parents' own earlier life course experiences, current family circumstances, and how a partner and child were getting along. The links with life course experiences meant that children were at risk of a “double dose” of less affectionate relationships in families in which parents had experienced early adversities. They found evidence for both selection effects (similarities in the early experience of both partners) and co-parenting effects (effects of one parent's relationship with a child on the other parent) and effects of biological relatedness.