Dr Penelope Leach is one of the world’s most respected (and best-loved) developmental child psychologists. Her research includes work on discipline, the effects of babies on their parents, and an ongoing look at childcare in the UK. Of course, Leach is most widely known for her best-selling books on child development and parenting. They include Babyhood, Children First: What Society Must Do – and Is Not Doing – for Our Children Today, the classic Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five (a new edition is in progress), and Your Growing Child: From Babyhood Through Adolescence. She also wrote the Lifetime Television series of 72 programmes, “Your Baby and Child with Penelope Leach” which won a CableAce award and was nominated for an Emmy.
Penelope was HomeStart Trustee 2001- 2004; President of the NCMA (National Childminding Association) from 1999-2009 and a founding member of AIMH (Association for Infant Mental Health) UK from 1998. She served as a member of the British Medical Association: Committee on Child Health 1997-99; as a trustee to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children 1996-99, on the Commission on Children and Violence 1995-96 and as a Member, Commission on Social Justice 1993-95. She was Chair of the Child Development Society: 1994-95 and Vice President of the Health Visitors Association 1988-99.
She attended Cambridge University and the University of London, where she received a Ph.D. in psychology in 1964. She has studied child development and childrearing as part of the British Medical Research Council, helped found the UK branch of the World Association for Infant Mental Health, and chaired the British Child Development Society.
Penelope was also Joint Principal Investigator: Families, Children and Child Care Study, a seven-year follow-up of 1200 children from birth into school 1997- 2005. Child Care Today, What We Know and What We Need to Know was published by Polity Press in 2009.
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