Annic Weyersberg¹, Simone Böhm-González¹

^{1 Department} of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, University Hospital Cologne

Time is not merely a physical measure, but a central ethical category that can play different roles, particularly throughout the course of a person’s life. In childhood, time possesses a special quality, as a child’s development is bound to strictly limited time windows. Certain milestones and experiences – particularly relational experiences, transitions and developmental stages – cannot be arbitrarily postponed, repeated or compensated for if missed. For children, therefore, lost time does not merely signify a temporary loss, but a potentially permanent deprivation and restriction of developmental opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted this specific temporal dimension of childhood in a particular way. Pandemic-related measures often followed an adult logic of time, in which restrictions were viewed as temporary and, in principle, something that could be made up for. For children, however, these same measures meant the loss of unique moments in life and irreversible developmental milestones. This has brought to light a temporal asymmetry between generations, raising questions of intergenerational justice and responsibility.

This is particularly evident in the case of preterm babies and their families. This lecture explores the specific dimension of time in the context of child development, drawing on the author’s own findings from qualitative studies into the experiences of parents of preterm babies during the first COVID-19 lockdown, as well as the experiences of school pupils during school closures in Germany. Loneliness, isolation and the loss of unique moments and experiences are of central importance here. Experiences and events surrounding birth and the neonatal period, as well as later in life, were experienced as time-limited and irreplaceable opportunities, the restriction of which has long-term repercussions.

From a paediatric-ethical perspective, this paper highlights that the concept of childhood temporality has so far been insufficiently taken into account in individual and collective crisis situations. The paper argues for the temporal dimensions of childhood to be recognised as a distinct ethical category and to be taken into account more systematically in future clinical, political and societal decision-making processes.