If your baby was born in Wales this year, there is roughly a one in three chance a letter will land asking your family to be studied as your child grows up.
One Welsh mother who has already been through it, in a pilot run earlier this year, said her family felt like a small part of something big.
She said life as a new parent meant constantly weighing up “this food, this play, this childcare”.
She added: “Having the scientific evidence to help the next generation of parents and professionals will be so beneficial, and I love that we are contributing to this.”
The study is Generation New Era, which will follow 30,000 babies born across the UK in 2026. The first interviews with Welsh mothers and fathers start this week.
Professor Lucy Griffiths of Swansea University Medical School, who leads it in Wales, said: “It’s fantastic that so many families from Wales will be invited to take part in Generation New Era.”
She said studies that follow children over many years had played “a vital role” in showing how they develop, and how the places they grow up in shape their lives.
Why Wales gets a bigger share than Scotland
Around 4,500 Welsh babies will have their parents invited. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all been given extra places so the results can be used for each country on its own, not just for the UK as a whole.
That means a third of Welsh babies, against a quarter in Scotland and around half in Northern Ireland, the study team says.
The letter arrives when the baby is around nine to 10 months old, with interviews running across the UK over the coming year.
What Generation New Era will ask Welsh parents
Expect questions on your baby’s development and health, your own health, family and home life, and the pressures from outside the front door, including inequality and disadvantage.
The topics were shaped with parents and the public as well as researchers and policymakers. Prof Griffiths said families’ answers would feed “new evidence that informs policies and services for children, families and communities across the UK”.
It is the first study of its kind in 25 years and, its researchers say, the largest ever. The UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies is running it, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UKRI.
Studies like it have followed tens of thousands of people over the past eight decades, and the researchers say they have shaped government thinking on early years, health, education and jobs.
Swansea University researchers have also been looking at the pressures on new parents closer to home. In August they found families watering down baby formula and going without heating as prices soared.
The study arrives as there are fewer babies to follow. In Swansea alone, the council expects a falling birth rate to leave 8,000 primary school desks empty by 2032.
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