New research from BookTrust paints a hopeful but worrying picture of childhood reading in the UK. Children still overwhelmingly enjoy books and stories - yet the daily routines that help build lifelong reading habits are increasingly under pressure.

The charity’s new National Family Survey: Trends, drivers and inequalities in UK childhood reading explored the reading habits of more than 3,500 families with children aged 0–8 across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The findings reveal a striking contradiction: children’s enjoyment of reading is rising, but shared reading at home is falling.

According to the survey, 80% of children are said to like or love reading, up from 65% in 2021.

Meanwhile, 90% of parents and carers say they enjoy reading with their child.

But despite this enthusiasm, only 49% of children are being read to daily – down from 60% in 2021.

Frequent shared reading (four or more days a week) has also dropped, from 80% to 75%.

BookTrust says the decline is not because families value reading less. Instead, parents are struggling against mounting pressures on everyday family life. Time, financial stress, unstable routines, limited access to books and a lack of confidence all make it harder to sustain regular reading habits.

The research highlights how unequal these pressures can be. Bedtime reading follows a clear income divide: just half of children in the lowest-income households are read to as part of a bedtime routine, compared with 69% in higher-income families. Families with more stable routines are also far more likely to read together daily.

One of the report’s strongest messages is that early reading matters enormously. Children who are read to in their first year of life are significantly more likely to continue being read with every day as they grow older. The survey found that 58% of children introduced to shared reading in infancy are read to daily later on, compared with just 31% of those who started later.

The findings arrive amid growing concern about reading for pleasure across the UK. Separate research from the National Literacy Trust found that reading enjoyment among older children and teenagers has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, with only one in three young people aged 8–18 saying they enjoy reading in their free time.

Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce has recently spoken out about the importance of putting pleasure, not pressure, at the heart of children’s reading. Speaking during the National Year of Reading campaign, he argued that families need support, reassurance and access to books – not guilt.

BookTrust’s report suggests practical ways to help families rebuild reading routines, including stronger library services, better access to books, more support for parents and carers, and embedding reading support across early years services, schools and community groups. The charity also points to the continued importance of programmes like Bookstart, which reaches families with babies and young children across the UK.

Perhaps the most encouraging finding is that children themselves still want stories. The appetite for reading is there. What many families need now are the time, support and opportunities to make shared reading feel possible again.

The reporting draws on a wide range of evidence to interpret significant findings from three national surveys of parents and carers with young children. The core dataset is a representative quota sample of 3,508 parents and carers of children aged 0–8 across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, surveyed online between 16 October and 5 November 2025. Trend comparisons are made using two earlier surveys in 2021 and 2022 which used comparable methods and samples. You can read the full research on the BookTrust website.

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