House, Vintage – a call to action spelling out the policies society should adopt, in favour of children and the grown-ups who care for them; a polemic suggesting large-scale social initiatives to end child poverty and homelessness and to enable parents better to balance paid work and family Child Care Today, Getting it right for everyone (2009) Alfred A. Knopf – who is caring for today's children, what does care cost and who is paying for it? Followed five years as co-director of the Families and Children and Childcare study (familieschildrenchildcare.org) The Essential First Year (2010) Dorling Kindersley – a modern guide to pregnancy and parenting in the first year, calling on new research from neuroscience Family Breakdown: helping children hang on to both their parents (2014), published in the United States as When Parents Part, Alfred A. Knopf – a guide to minimising the impact of parental separation and divorce on children. Leach has also produced several home videos sponsored by Barnardo's (Becoming a Family, Baby to Toddler, and Toddler to Child 1987–1988) as well as collaborating on a play, Snap Happy, that toured schools between 1986 and 1991 to teach conflict resolution to preschool and school-aged children. Reception Leach has been criticised for her view that young children require one-on-one attention, ideally provided by mothers or family members and which cannot be provided in day-care. Criticism has chiefly been directed towards Leach's purported idolising of mothers and difficulty giving fathers equal importance, and the lack of scientific evidence to support Leach's opposition to child care where the ratio of adults to infants is too low for individualised care. However, The Essential First Year, published in 2010, has a chapter called "Thinking about working outside your home" which says "Your baby will flourish without you while you are at work as long as he passes seamlessly from your loving care to someone elses and back again on your return...." After the release of her book Family Breakdown, Leach asserted that there was "undisputed evidence" that sleepovers with a divorced father, who is not the child's primary caregiver, can cause 'emotional damage' to a baby or toddler. Leach's claim has been broadly disputed by other psychologists. Family In 1963 she married the science journalist Gerald A. Leach (1933–2004). She has a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Melissa Leach. References External links Interview with Penelope Leach 1937 births Living people 20th-century