A Circular Business

Penelope Leach

Penelope Jane Leach (née Balchin; born November 19, 1937), is a British psychologist who researches and writes extensively on parenting issues from a child development perspective.

Leach is best known for her book Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five, published in 1977, which has sold over two million copies to date and won the BMA award for “best medical book for general audiences” in 1998. Leach notes in the introduction to that book: “Whatever you are doing, however you are coping, if you listen to your child and to your own feelings, there will be something you can actually do to put things right or make the best of those that are wrong.”

Your Baby and Child

Leach’s most popular work is Your Baby and Child, which appeared in extensively revised versions in 1988 1997, 2003 and 2010. The book is divided into five major sections, covering newborns, “settled babies,” “older babies,” “toddlers,” and “young children.” Each section includes information on expected developmental milestones and patterns in the areas of sleep, eating, “crying and comforting,” speech, and physical growth. The book’s central thesis is to illuminate “the successive tasks of development with which [children] are involved, the kinds of thought of which they are capable and the extremes of emotion that carry them along” because “the happier you can make your baby, the more you will enjoy being with her, and the more you enjoy her, the happier she will be.”

The popularity of Your Baby and Child led to a television series of the same name on Lifetime, which Leach wrote and hosted. The show won a CableACE Award and was nominated for an Emmy.