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This is a challenging book and one calculated to make us think about all our assumptions, implicit as well as explicit, not only about the needs of children but also our whole way of life.
Dr. Mia Kellmer Pringle, who is well known for her work as Director of the National Children's Bureau and for the wealth of research which she has initiated, not only reviews for us succinctly and comprehensively the latest research on the needs of the developing child but confronts us with the need to act on it in our social policies and economic arrangements.
She does not shirk from tackling courageously many controversial issues, such as sex differences, the effect of working mothers on the development of children, the adequacy of group day care for under threes. She puts forward powerful arguments, both logical and economic for making “prevention” a cornerstone of social policy.
She means prevention of emotional and intellectual neglect and deprivation as well as handicap in childhood. She advocates a long-term comprehensive policy for children “based on improving the quality of parenting, of health care and of education from cradle to adulthood”. The achievement of such a policy requires, in her view, “three wide ranging changes: first a different attitude to parenthood and child rearing; second, a willingness to provide more adequate supportive services for families and children; and third the acceptance both of children's rights to consistent, continuing, dependable, loving care and of parents' obligations to provide it”.
Dr. Kellmer Pringle suggests a radical change in our attitude to parenthood. She challenges the view that equality for women means “sameness” and criticises the current social pressures on women both to marry and have children and to “ape the male model” by competing in the world of paid employment, thus ending up overburdened by two jobs and unable to enjoy the children. She suggests that recognition should be given to the fact that bringing up children is on