Hardship and parenting: the baby years

The first year of a baby’s life is a period of rapid learning and development, setting foundations for the future. In this blog, we show how babies’ experiences vary according to the poverties and material hardships experienced by parents.

Particularly, we evidence a pronounced link between experiencing hardships – debt, material deprivation and/or food poverty – and reading activities. This link that holds regardless of parents’ education level, indicating that, even among highly educated families, poverty and hardship may impact learning and development. Indeed, the link between hardships and reading seems most pronounced for parents with postgraduate-level qualifications.

Parenting in the infant years

Parents’ interactions and activities with their infants are crucial to experiences and development in the earliest years. But the resources available to and constraints and hardships faced by parents influence the extent to which they can create a stimulating ‘home learning environment, and nurture their baby’s growth.

Previous research with older children has shown that poverty and hardship are key factors impacting some parenting behaviours. [1] This is via material circumstances creating stress and mental ill-health. It is also via poverty and hardships preventing parents affording and accessing experiences and resources. [2]

Poverty is directly related to children’s outcomes, including educational attainment, cognitive and social-behavioural development, and health. [3] As a family factor, is particularly of interest because it – and the hardships and deprivations that result from it – is preventable by policymakers.

In 2025, the government’s abolition of the ‘two child limit’ (imposed in 2017) demonstrated how policy can create and then mitigate poverty.
While in place, the limit pushed ‘child poverty to record highs, while its cessation is ‘expected to reduce child poverty by 450,000 by the end of the parliament’ [4] – though there is still much to be done.

[1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmhealth/1496/1496.pdf
[2] https://theses.lse.ac.uk/3633/
[31 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12187-020-09782-0
(4] https://www.ippr.org/articles/restoring-security-understanding-the-effects-of-removing-the-two-child-limit-across-the-uk