Transitions: young children’s lived experiences of early learning and childcare from Covid-19 lockdowns to the present

This research paper focuses on situating young children’s experiences in childcare and early learning from Covid-19 lockdowns to the present in Delhi, India. The main findings are drawn from primary fieldwork with children in classes 1 and 2 (in August 2022) using child-centred participatory methods and unstructured interviews with seven caregivers. The main questions the paper explores are: how did young children experience learning and childcare during Covid-19 lockdown and the aftermath? And how can these experiences during lockdowns help us understand the current structuring of children’s daily lives? The conceptual tools used to explore these questions are drawn from theories situated within critical childhood studies including the sociology of childhood, and at the intersection of culture and child development.
The findings reveal the changing nature of priorities in childcare and learning from lockdowns to the present. In terms of childcare, I highlight children’s role in the distributed care system on one hand, and parental constructions of their needs and vulnerabilities on the other. I show how growing concerns around children’s use of time in lockdowns led to a search for alternate avenues for learning, which were available through private tutoring. Further, my findings demonstrate the enduring impacts of this shift on children’s present routines. Finally, the paper questions assumptions around children’s linear trajectories and prescriptions of ‘developmental milestones’ and argues for a more contextually grounded approach that situates children’s socio-cultural background to understand experiences of childhood.