WHY CAN'T WE REMEMBER BEING BABIES?
Have you ever wondered why none of us can recall our very first years of life? We all went through countless experiences as infants—our first laugh, the first time we crawled, or the first toy we held—but those moments remain locked away from our conscious memory. This mysterious gap in memory is called infantile amnesia, and scientists have been curious about it for decades.
There are several reasons why we can’t remember our babyhood:
1. Brain Development
The hippocampus, a part of the brain crucial for forming long-term, explicit memories, is still developing in the first few years of life.
Babies do learn and remember things, but these memories are often implicit (skills, habits, emotional responses) rather than explicit (clear, story-like memories).
2. Language Development
Memories are easier to form and recall once we have words to describe experiences.
Since infants don’t yet have a developed vocabulary, they can’t encode events in a way that matches how we recall them later in life.
3. Sense of Self
Autobiographical memory (the kind where we remember personal life events) depends on having a concept of “self”.
Babies don’t fully recognise themselves as separate, enduring individuals until around age 2. Without that sense of self, experiences aren’t stored as “my memories.”
4. Memory Storage and Forgetting
Early memories may be stored differently and later become inaccessible as the brain reorganises during childhood.
Neural pruning (the brain trimming unused connections) might also wipe out or reshape early memories.
5. Emotional Encoding
Babies do form emotional bonds and associations (for example, recognising a caregiver’s face or feeling soothed by a lullaby).
These are remembered in a more emotional, bodily sense rather than as clear, retrievable stories.
So, while we can’t recall being babies in the way we remember school or birthdays, our earliest years still shape us profoundly—through attachments, habits, and emotional patterns.
