Babyhood as one imagines it to be (7)
I believe the answer is:
infancy
'babyhood' is the definition.
(I know that babyhood can be written as infancy)
'as one imagines it to be' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'as' could be 'in' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'in' is located in the answer.
'one' could be 'an' (an apple is one apple) and 'an' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for infancy that I've seen before include "Early years" , "minority" , "Early stages of" , "beginning" , "Babyhood" .)