Your Baby and Child

Penelope Leach, research psychologist and mother of two, is a favourite source of child development information and child care advice for parents all over the world, and a powerful advocate for the needs of families.

After a first degree in history at Cambridge University, a diploma in social work and then a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of London, she studied many aspects of child development and child rearing under the auspices of the Medical Research Council.

With ten years of research behind her, though, the births of her own children made her aware of gulfs between theory and practice, professionals and parents, adults and children, even men and women. Much of her subsequent work has been devoted to building bridges across them from both sides. Accordingly she is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Vice President of the Health Visitors' Association and past President and Chair of the Child Development Society, yet she also works for parents' and children's organizations concerned with antenatal education and birth; parental leave and family-friendly working practices, day-care and early years education. She currently directs a programme of research into the effects of various forms and combinations of care on children's development from birth to school age.

Penelope Leach's books include Babyhood: Infant Development from Birth to Two Years and The Parents' A-Z, both of which are published in Penguin; The First Six Months: Coming to Terms with Your Baby; Children First: What Society Must Do - and is Not Doing - for Children Today; and, of course, the acclaimed Baby and Child, which in its original version sold over three million copies in twenty-nine languages, and was the basis for an award-winning cable TV series shown all over the world. This new version of the book, Your Baby and Child, won First Prize in the Popular Medicine Category of the BMA Medical Book Competition.