Landscape For A Good Infant

If we crouch down to the level of the infant, what might we learn about the evolution of the welfare state and its role in the lives of babies, young children, and the people who care for them? How have our attitudes towards it changed from its inception to the present day?

Dr Emily Baughan, historian of modern childhood and mother of two infants, explores how our ideas about infancy, motherhood, and the role of the state have shifted over the last six decades.

Today, formula milk is one of the most shoplifted items in the UK. But if you were born before 1976, your formula milk would have been provided by the state. Known as “national milk”, it is just one example of how the state has shaped different generations’ experiences of infancy. We already understand how the national curriculum and school dinners have produced a distinctly British experience of childhood for older children - but what about the under‑fives?

Drawing on a wealth of BBC archive from the 1960s to today, alongside her own research and personal reflections, Emily takes on this baby’s‑eye view of the state, discovering how it has helped shape generations. She hears how a baby born in 1980 would have spent their first hours in a Perspex crib in a hospital nursery, while a baby born in 2000 would have been delivered straight onto their mother’s chest, rarely leaving her side. A baby in 1985 might have attended one of 300,000 free community playgroups; by 2025, they would be unlikely to find any non‑profit play provision outside a church. Are we, as adults, the product of what the state deems important for infants?

Featuring interviews with Miriam Stoppard, Professor Carolyn Steedman (author of Landscape for a Good Woman) and Stella Creasy MP.

Producer: Eliza Lomas
Editor: Chris Ledgard