Who was Mia Kellmer Pringle?
At a time when children and families are high on the political agenda, we sometimes forget that it was not always so. But if there is one person who laid the foundations for the current focus on prevention and early intervention, and on the importance of the first five years of life and the role of parents, it is Mia Kellmer Pringle, founder and first director of the National Children's Bureau.
Mia was born in 1921 and grew up in Vienna, fleeing from Nazi occupation with her mother as a young woman of 18. They arrived in England with little more than the clothes they were wearing. In the following years, Mia showed the determination, ability and sheer hard work that were to characterise her for the rest of her life.
For 12 years she kept up a punishing schedule of part-time jobs - including working in Woolworths, typing and working as a nursery and primary teacher - while she pursued her higher education, gaining a first class honours degree in psychology from Birkbeck College in 1944 and a PhD from the University of London in 1950. She qualified as an educational psychologist in 1945 and worked in Hertfordshire before moving to the Department of Child Study at the University of Birmingham in 1950.
Mia's 13 years in Birmingham as a researcher and trainer of psychologists and teachers earned her a national and international reputation. She began to develop two key skills that became her trademark: academic rigour in her research, and the ability to communicate complex and important ideas through simple language.
Mia always saw children 'in the round'. It is not difficult to understand why she was drawn to the discussions about setting up a 'joined up' organisation to promote the welfare of children. In 1963, Mia was invited to become the first director of the newly formed National Bureau for Co-operation in Child Care, a job she threw herself into. She was introduced to Dr Neville Butler, who had studied all the babies in Britain born in one week of March 1958. Mia immediately realised the tremendous potential of following these 17,000 children over a longer period. Attempts to raise money from government succeeded when the Plowden committee into primary education realised the potential of the data. In 1964 the National Child Development Study was born.
When Mia appointed me to work with her at what was by then called the National Children's Bureau (NCB) in 1974, it soon became clear that she was remarkable. She was a phenomenal worker, at that point reading every NCB publication (I well remember her neat pencil comments on everything I wrote); a tireless and passionate advocate for children, particularly those who were disadvantaged and disabled, and families; an excellent communicator, persuasive and fluent in her arguments. On top of this she was a warm and caring woman with a twinkle in her eye, behind a sometimes rather austere exterior, and a very private person. She was very skilled in obtaining funding from government departments and would exasperate civil servants by ignoring refusals to fund projects and going directly to ministers.
Mia was twice widowed and had no children of her own. She died tragically early at age 62, having retired from the NCB two years earlier when her 'baby' reached its 18th birthday.
What was her contribution?
Mia Kellmer Pringle's most obvious legacy is the NCB, a unique organisation which has recently celebrated its 40th birthday. Its founding objects were based on 'putting children first', and on two key sets of relationships:
- co-operation between all the key service providers in education, social care and health, and between the voluntary and statutory sectors, in order to improve services for children
- the interface between research, policy and practice - how what we know from research needs to influence policy and practice, and vice versa.
While the NCB has adapted to changing priorities, these two key concepts remain constant, and are driving today's Every Child Matters agenda.
Mia's support for the National Child Development Study, and her ability to persuade government departments to fund this substantial research - up to and including the fourth follow-up when the 'children' were 23 years old - was also considerable. This study, which continues today, has been hugely influential in identifying a whole range of issues, such as:
- The link between smoking in pregnancy and later child development
- The link between parent involvement and children's educational attainment
- Identifying factors that help children to succeed, even when all the odds seem to be stacked against them.
It also produced influential studies on lone parents, illegitimacy, adoption and residential childcare, all of which Mia drew on to press for changes in policy and in practice.
Mia's personal childhood experience and her training and work as a psychologist led to the book by which she is most often defined, The Needs of Children, first published in 1975. It draws on the work of John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, as well as her own clinical practice. Mia's themes in this book are the importance of:
- the early years of life to later development
- the environment in which children grow
- children's social and emotional needs as well as their physical needs.
Failure to meet these needs has long-term consequences; parents have a key role in meeting their children's needs, and parenting should be better supported and taken more seriously.
What were her main messages?
Most of Mia's key messages are now integral to current policy developments, even if we have some way to go in ensuring that all children get the start in life they deserve.
- Children are our future, and their upbringing and care is a skilled, responsible and demanding job in which the community as a whole should invest considerable resources.
- Children need love and security, new experiences, praise and recognition, and responsibility.
- Failure to meet children's needs in the early years leads to long-term difficulties.
- Parenting is too demanding and complex a task to think it can be performed well merely because we have all been children.
- The school curriculum should include human psychology, child development and preparation for parenthood.
- Pre-school education should be expanded, and care and education should be integrated.
- 'If even half of what we know were accepted with feeling and applied with understanding by all who have the care of children, then the revolution brought about in children's physical health in the past 40 years might well be matched by a similar change in their psychological well-being.' NW Gillian Pugh is the former chief executive of Coram Family
Key references
- Pringle M K (1975) The Needs of Children London: Hutchinson
- Pringle M K (1979) A Fairer Future for Children London: Macmillan
- Vallender I and Fogelman K (eds) (1987) Putting Children First: a volume in honour of Mia Kellmer Pringle Lewes: Falmer Press
- National Children's Bureau
