Reviewed by Professor Peter Moss, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education University of London
Barbara Tizard is one of our leading postwar child psychologists. Her work on children, adolescents and families, whether on residential nurseries, adoption, young children's conversations and learning, or racialised identities, has been ground-breaking and influential. She worked for many years at the Thomas Coram Research Unit at London University's Institute of Education, where I had the great good fortune to know her, and where she became the Unit's director after the death of her husband Jack Tizard.
She has published widely, including hundreds of academic articles and chapters and six academic books. Now, in her mid-80s, Barbara has written a new book, but this time about her own life and times - 'one woman's memoir', as she puts it.
The book is mainly about her childhood and youth, up to leaving university and early marriage. It takes us from West Ham to Oxford. But it is not about an effortless rise to academic and career success. It is a story of struggle and hard times, of family break-up and illness, and of three strong, politically active women, all of whom combined motherhood and an active life outside the home: Barbara herself, professor, peace activist and mother of five children; her teacher mother, who became a pre-war president of the NUT; and her working-class grandmother, active in the co-operative movement. It shatters the myth that all children of this era were brought up by homebound mothers and breadwinning fathers. It is also a story of its time, offering vivid insights into England in the 1930s and 1940s. It becomes very clear why Barbara's later research was driven by a desire to effect policy and improve the lives of children and families.
The book is, above all, a great read, a real page turner. If you are interested in gender or class, people or politics, domestic life or social history, this is essential reading.
