Vanessa Redgrave

Available for over a year

Vanessa Redgrave joins Jenni to talk about her latest film The Fever, showing as part of the Raindance Film Festival. She also explains why she feels compelled to highlight human rights issues in both her work and her personal life, how she finds working with her children, and why she would like to go into semi-retirement, but can't afford to stop. What is the text book way to deal with tantrums and displays of anger in young children? Is ignoring them the best strategy? Is it really so bad to give in? Jenni talks to Stephanie Calman, author of Confessions of a Bad Mother and Gillian Edwards, learning and behaviour specialist and assistant director of the New Learning Centre. This morning, fathers and grandparents who are full time carers of the children in their family, heard the news that the renowned writer on childcare issues, Penelope Leach, says her research shows that children raised by their mothers do better in developmental tests than others. She'll present the findings of her study of 1,200 families in Oxford and North London at the conference of the National Childminding Association later this morning, from where she speaks to Jenni on the phone. You have to suffer to be beautiful is a commonly heard expression. But some women have been forced to go through unimaginable pain to conform to the required standard. It is estimated that two-billion Chinese girls had their feet bound in order to achieve the tiny feet that were seen as the epitome of beauty. The practice continued until the beginning of the twentieth century, but today the last generation of women with bound feet is dying out. Louisa Lim reports from Beijing.