Opinion: Pandemic babies - how Covid-19 has affected child development

The first months and years of a child's life are vitally important for their long-term health, and more research is urgently needed into how the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown will have affected babies, says Professor Pasco Fearon (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences). Babies born after March 11 2020 will have only known a world in the grip of a pandemic. They may never have met anyone who isn't their parent, or they may only ever have seen their grandparents from a distance. They certainly will not have had the same opportunities to interact with other children as those born in the years before. What are the implications for these pandemic children? While as researchers we do think that most babies will have had an opportunity to thrive, there's still a lot we don't know, and we are clear that the first months and years of life are vitally important for a child's long-term health, development and wellbeing. Development takes place at an extraordinary rate during a baby's first year, when the brain doubles in size. This early development depends crucially on experience, and particularly social experience, which stimulates, tunes and hones the brain's unfolding architecture.