Pampers launches The Village Barometer Baby Report as 53% of UK parents feel lonely despite 63% having a Village

Key Takeaways

• Pampers has published The Village Barometer, a Pampers Baby Report measuring the support around babies and families during the first 1,000 days.

• Ipsos surveyed 4,339 parents and 425 paediatricians across nine European countries including the UK, with UNICEF providing further statistical review.

• In the UK, 63% of parents say they have a Village, yet 53% feel lonely at least some of the time against 44% across Europe.

• The full report can be downloaded from the Pampers UK website and gives Europe a baseline score of 58 out of 100.

Pampers has launched The Village Barometer, a new report exploring what “it takes a village” means for parents in the UK today. While almost two in three parents (63%) say they have a village around them, more than half (53%) still feel lonely at least some of the time, revealing a gap between having a support network and feeling supported. The report makes the familiar phrase measurable by scoring the people, places and services surrounding a baby during their first 1,000 days.

Pampers Baby Report surveys 4,339 parents and 425 paediatricians across nine countries with Ipsos

The Village Barometer brings together 15 indicators across five areas of support, which are Connection & Support, Confidence & Clarity, Rest & Recovery, Play & Bonding and Baby-Friendly Futures. Ipsos carried out the research on behalf of Pampers, with further statistical review by UNICEF, insights from Professor Natasha Kirkham of Birkbeck, University of London, and input from LEGO Duplo on the role of play. Across Europe, the 2026 reading is 58 out of 100, which Pampers describes as a baseline for understanding the conditions around families and explicitly not as a judgement of parents.

Across Europe, parents expect an average of 3.4 types of support and experience just 2.8, whereas paediatricians believe parents should have an average of 8.3 sources of support. In the UK, that Village mostly consists of the parents themselves or a partner (72%), immediate or extended family (70%) and friends (51%). Almost half of UK parents also feel overwhelmed by the amount of parenting information available, compared with 42% across Europe, and 95% of paediatricians surveyed agree that too many sources of advice can overwhelm parents.

Sleep and play are where the UK looks most stretched, with a Rest & Recovery score of 49 and a Play & Bonding score of 39 against 48 for Europe. More than half of UK parents (54%) say their sleep is interrupted often or every night, the highest figure of the nine countries, while 59% often or always feel tired, and parents across Europe report losing an average of 5.5 hours of sleep a week. Although 90% of UK parents say early play is very or extremely important, fewer than half feel confident supporting development through play compared with 64% across Europe, and 76% feel at least one pressure or judgement around it, which is again the highest of the nine countries.

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