Nursery World - Positive Relationships: Childcare Pioneers

Child psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs had another, lesser-known role: as
an agony aunt. Caroline Vollans makes the case for considering her
advice in the context of modern practice

It is a little known fact that a woman respected for her ground-breaking work in nursery education and her extensive work as a child psychoanalyst was also a prolific parenting advisor. Her words of advice were written about 80 years ago in a column in The Nursery World, as it was called then.

'Everyday difficulties' appeared weekly from 1929 to 1936 and readers were invited to write in: 'Ursula Wise is always pleased to have letters from mothers about difficulties with children. All queries are answered on these pages, so please give initials or a pseudonym'. What was not known by the readers, however, was that Ursula Wise was too a pseudonym.

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