Over the course of her career, Pringle advocated for the needs and rights of children both through her research-informed policy work and in her many books and articles about early childhood development.
Their circumstances changed swiftly after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, and Pringle and her mother were forced to flee to London as refugees.
She earned a BA in psychology with first-class honours in 1944, then received her qualification as an educational and clinical psychologist from the London Child Guidance Training Centre in 1945.
She continued her studies, working toward a PhD at Birckbeck College while serving as a psychologist for the Hertfordshire Child Guidance Service.
[2][3] Her PhD thesis, completed in 1950, was titled "A study of Doll's social maturity scale as applied to a representative sample of British children between the age of 6 and 8 years.
[2][3] Over the course of her career Pringle wrote and edited 20 books and numerous articles about the care of children and their development, including "Adoption: Facts and Fallacies" (1964).
[4] It draws on the work of other specialists in child development, including John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, as well as on her own practice and experience in the field.
[2] Pringle was skilled at raising funds for NCB projects, often circumventing bureaucratic obstacles by going directly to ministers with her appeals.
[5] She was known for her insistence on combining research with practice, bridging the realms of academic theory and public policy in order to better understand and address the needs of children.