Transforming Infant Wellbeing brings together science and policy to highlight the critical importance of the first 1001 days of infancy: the period from conception to the second birthday.
Transforming Infant Wellbeing brings together science and policy to highlight the critical importance of the first 1001 days of infancy: the period from conception to the second birthday. Introduced and edited by Penelope Leach, who uniquely combines academic knowledge of infant development with the ability to write about it for wide audiences, the book has at its heart 25 original articles by acknowledged experts in different aspects of infant health and development. Brought together, they showcase innovative science and best practices to a wide range of readers: to scientific colleagues in different disciplines; to politicians and policy makers; to local authority commissioners and specialist advisors, statutory and voluntary organisations and parents.
This book has a two-fold purpose in science and in social policy. First, to collect new papers by leading scientists in a single volume, which ensures they reach a broad audience. Second, by introducing and commenting on the significance of these new findings, the book highlights both the benefits that accrue to society when it acts accordingly, and the costs, financial and social, of our failure to do so.
In the last 50 years, interest in infant development and especially maternal and infant mental health has burgeoned. A large number of issues at the forefront of child development research mirror those of yesterday, but the research brought to bear upon them has transformed. Thanks largely to technological and statistical advances, we now know a great deal that researchers of earlier generations could only surmise. However, increasing knowledge of infancy has not been matched by an increasing impact on parents and professionals, politicians and policy makers. Bringing contemporary studies involving pregnancy, birth, infancy and toddlerhood together, along with the undisputed evidential findings that flow from them, large gaps between what is known and what is done become apparent. By focusing on what can be done to fill those gaps, Transforming Infant Wellbeing renders inescapable the need to rethink current priorities. It represents essential reading for researchers, parents and policy makers of infancy.
"Whenever Penelope Leach writes about children and childhood, the world rightly listens. Young children's nurturance has been far too low a priority for decades. In assembling 25 leading-edge contributions showcasing the latest scientific thinking on infant wellbeing, Leach's much-needed new book will be a key resource for both advancing that science and for closing the yawning gap between what we know and what policy-makers do in and around early childhood. Anyone connected with young children's lives can't afford not to read it." (Dr Richard House, C.Psychol., founder of Early Childhood Action)Something is badly wrong with the mental health of young Britons, and baby and toddlerhood is where it starts. The science now backs up what our hearts have always known: we have to take better care of young parents. Clear, and stunningly comprehensive, in this book Dr. Leach assembles an army of reasoned voices at the gates of government, calling for a revolution. (Steve Biddulph, AM)
