The age 9-months survey
The first CNC survey took place when your babies were between 9 and 11 months old and you answered questions about their different starting points in life.
An 8-page magazine, The babies of the new millennium, shows detailed results from the first survey.
This magazine builds on the leaflet that we sent to you around the time of your child's fourth birthday, which also expressed our thanks for your participation in the first and second surveys, and gave news about future plans.
Of the 23,000 families we originally contacted, we were able to interview 18,552 Child of the New Century families throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between June 2001 and January 2003. Of these families, 246 had twins and 10 had triplets.
The first survey revealed that over the whole of the UK, 51% of your babies were boys and 49% were girls. This picture was similar in all four countries of the UK.
Across the UK, the most common girl’s name was Chloe whilst for boys it was Jack. When we looked at names in the separate countries, we found that Jack and Chloe were favourites in England and Wales, whereas in Northern Ireland, the most popular girl’s name was Lauren. In Scotland it was Lewis for boys and Lucy for girls.
We looked at how old you were when you gave birth to your baby and found that, on average, mums were nearly 29 years old and dads were around 32. We also found some older parents – the oldest dad was 68 and the oldest mum was 53.
When we investigated how involved dads were with their babies, we discovered that approximately 4 out of 5 dads were present at the birth of their baby. We also found that over half of all the fathers said they changed their baby’s nappies at least once a day, while only 1 in 16 dads said they had never changed a nappy.
Most of you answered questions about your baby’s development, in particular their reactions to bath times, feeding and other children. You also told us if they were on solids and sleeping through the night.
A third of mothers told us that their cohort baby frequently made a fuss or cried before bedtime and another 1 in 3 babies woke up at least once a night. Unsurprisingly, half of mothers reported feeling tired most of the time.
Almost 90% of babies were walking a few steps by the time we came to see you and just over a third could wave ‘bye bye’.
We are continuing to look at the answers you gave us, and as soon as we have more results, we’ll put them on this website.
The interviews went very well and almost all of the families we got in touch with were happy to be included in this important study. Thank you for taking part!
In total, we managed to talk to 18,552 families throughout the UK. As 246 of you had twins and 10 of you triplets, we now have details for 18,818 babies.
Findings from this first survey have been published in the book Children of the 21st Century: from birth to nine months. For further information see Publications.
