This introduction to the special issue on ‘The Queerness of Babies’ places the contributors – a mix of analysts, academics and artists – in conversation with one another to set up the core contention that the baby is, psychoanalytically speaking, essentially queer. The contributors explore how this claim might be understood and find productive approaches, depending on their expertise, in the clinic, in the family, in cultural history, or in (imaginings of) the baby itself. Building on Freud’s notion of polymorphous perversity to question the baby from a queer perspective, the introduction offers definitions, makes connections, and contextualises the risks of such a project.