Child Care Today Getting It Right for Everyone

Penelope Leach, the universally admired author of the best-selling classicYourBaby and Child,diagnoses the state of child care in America and the world today. Who is caring for todayrs"s children? How well are they succeeding? What does care cost, and who is paying for it? Leach answers these and other urgent questions with facts and figures gathered from the most current research, brought to life by the voices of parents, including those involved in her own five-year study. She highlights the urgent need in America today for measures to raise the quality of child care and to make the best care we can provide available to all families, just as it is in most other developed nations. Setting out clearly and candidly what is known about every aspect of child care-including the often hidden feelings and fears of parents-Leach presents a critical case for change.

Penelope Leach was educated at Cambridge University and at the London School of Economics, where she received her Ph.D. in psychology, after which she studied many aspects of child development and child rearing under the auspices of Britain’s Medical Research Council. A Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a founding member of the U.K. branch of the World Association for Infant Mental Health, she works on both sides of the Atlantic in various capacities for organizations concerned with prenatal care and birth, family-friendly working practices, day care, and early years education. She has recently co-directed a major program of research in the United Kingdom into the effects of various forms and combinations of care on children’s development from birth to school age. Penelope Leach has two children and six grandchildren and lives in Lewes, England.


From the Hardcover edition.