Combining insights from ontological insecurity and moral panics: Post-COVID-19 discourses of young children’s ‘learning deficits’ in the United Kingdom

Children are ambivalently positioned as both threats and redemptive agents to adult hopes and dreams. Bringing together concepts from ontological insecurity and moral panics, this article analyses media discourses in the United Kingdom on young children’s learning and development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Three themes are discussed: how children’s learning deficits become the subject of concern, how claims behind this discourse are established, and how blame and moral outrage are directed at parents as scapegoats. The article finds that children’s inequalities are both hybervisibilised and invisibilised, limiting the potential for more radical structural and educational change.