Interviews with mothers and fathers start this week as Generation New Era, the UK’s largest ever national birth cohort study, begins.
Led by the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, the study will follow 30,000 babies born in 2026 as they grow up in our changing world. Generation New Era will be the first UK-wide study of its kind in 25 years, and the largest ever.
Selected parents will be sent letters inviting them to take part in the study when their babies are around nine to 10 months old, and interviews will take place across the UK over the coming year.
About Generation New Era
The study aims to build an up-to-date picture of children’s development and will examine what it means to raise a child today – the challenges and the factors that help children to thrive. The information shared by families in this study will help build a detailed, representative evidence base to inform how public policy can meet the needs of families today.
Funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund and the Economic and Social Research Council, Generation New Era is the newest in a long tradition of UK birth cohort studies based at UCL, with each following a different generation of people – from baby boomers to generation beta.
Parents selected for the study will be asked questions on a variety of topics that have been developed with the input of parents and the public, expert researchers, and policymakers. The research themes include babies’ development and health, parental health, family and home, social and environmental influences, inequality, disadvantage and diversity.
The study team will also invite parents to use a smartphone app to log their baby’s language and wider development, and other baby-focused topics monthly.
Families will be invited to take part in another interview when their child is three years old. The study aims to follow the children throughout their lives, from childhood into adulthood.
The world children are growing up in is changing fast. Generation New Era will listen to families from all walks of life, especially families whose voices are often missing from research.
Alissa Goodman, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of Generation New EraProfessor Alissa Goodman, Co-Director of the study said: “As interviews with families begin, we are delighted to start hearing directly from mothers and fathers across the UK.
“The world children are growing up in is changing fast. Generation New Era will listen to families from all walks of life, especially families whose voices are often missing from research. The study will help shine a light on the challenges and opportunities they face today.”
A wide range of questions
Family life has changed significantly in the last 25 years. Parents and children now navigate a 24/7 digital world. From AI tools for online parenting advice, to screen time, Generation New Era will explore how technology shapes family life and children’s early development.
The study will examine a wide range of questions, such as what drives inequalities in child development in early life, how cost of living pressures are affecting families with young children, and how families are managing work and childcare responsibilities.
With parents’ consent, survey responses will be linked to routine administrative data, such as health, education, and social care records, giving researchers a more comprehensive picture of families’ lives.
The study design
To make sure the study is big enough to create policy evidence for each of the four UK countries, the study contains substantial boosts in the number of eligible families in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A quarter of babies born in Scotland, a third in Wales and around half of all babies born in Northern Ireland in 2026 will be invited to take part.
Research about babies and family life has often overlooked fathers, despite their important role in children’s lives, and studies involving dads have helped improve support for families and shaped policies including paid paternity leave. This is why fathers are a big focus of this study, and the study aims to include all parents, including those who do not live with their baby, even if they have little contact.
The study has been designed to listen to the experiences of diverse families from a wide range of backgrounds. This includes boosted samples of ethnic minority families, and families living in lower-income areas. We are also very keen to hear from young parents.
In hearing directly from a variety of families across the UK, Generation New Era will provide vital evidence to inform decisions about health, education, childcare, family support services and local communities for years to come. Invited parents will be a voice for families like theirs.
Families invited to join the study are strongly encouraged to take part, so that the study contains a representative mix of families from across the UK. However, parents cannot volunteer to join the study without an invitation. This is so that the balance of different families taking part remains reflective of all of the UK.
This is an exciting moment for the first new UK-wide birth cohort study in a quarter of a century as the first interviews with parents begin. We are proud to invest in such an important study as the evidence produced will influence public policy for generations to come, building on the rich legacy of our existing cohort studies.
Building on 80 years of discovery
Generation New Era is the newest in a long tradition of birth cohort studies in the UK, that follow people from infancy and across their lives. Generation New Era builds on more than 80 years of UCL’s national studies following people across their lives, including studies of those born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000-02. These studies have transformed our understanding of how early experiences shape health, education, work, and wellbeing later in life, helping governments and organisations plan around people’s real experiences.
Their evidence has informed decisions on early years support, education, health, employment and family services. For example, evidence from the Children of the 90s study helped confirm that babies could safely sleep on their backs, supporting the ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign recognised in dramatically reducing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the UK.
Research using the Millennium Cohort Study showed that breastfeeding was linked with fewer hospital admissions for serious infections in babies. This evidence has helped inform UNICEF UK’s Baby Friendly standards, which support maternity and health services to give families high-quality infant-feeding care.
Notes to editors
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact:
Lucy Morling, UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies
T: +44 (0)7835 020 313
E: l.morling@ucl.ac.uk
Ryan Bradshaw, UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies
T: +44 (0)207 612 6516
E: r.bradshaw@ucl.ac.uk
About birth cohort studies
Generation New Era is part of a long tradition of ESRC funded UK longitudinal birth cohort studies which have followed the lives of tens of thousands of people over the past eight decades. These include the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development, CLS’s 1958 National Child Development Study, 1970 British Cohort Study and the most recent UK-wide study, which Generation New Era follows, the Millennium Cohort Study.
These studies have shaped the thinking of successive governments, informing a raft of important policies to improve the provision of services for early years, health, education and employment. They have produced evidence that has improved lives across the UK and beyond.
The findings generated by the study will directly inform policy development across government departments, helping to ensure services and support for families are based on robust evidence.
The study team is a UK-wide collaboration including researchers from Cambridge University, Swansea University, the University of Edinburgh, and Ulster University, and also includes the Fatherhood institute who are supporting engagement with fathers with Generation New Era.
Survey interviewers are carried out by three independent research organisations: Ipsos, NatCen and Verian. All interviewers are required to follow the rules of the Market Research Society Code of Conduct. They are specially trained and carefully chosen to work on this study.
About the Economic and Social Research Council
The UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental public body funded by a grant-in-aid from the UK government. We fund world-leading research, data and post-graduate training in the economic, behavioural, social and data sciences to understand people and the world around us. Our work helps raise productivity, address climate change, improve public services and generate a prosperous, inclusive, healthy and secure society.
