Little is known about cross-linguistic differences in infants’ production and acquisition of voice quality parameters. In our study of Canadian English, Moroccan Arabic, and Chinese Bai infants, we found that for all infants, laryngeally constricted phonatory settings (harsh voice, creaky voice, whispery voice, and whisper) predominate in the first months of life and decline throughout the first year in favour of unconstricted settings (modal voice, breathy voice, and falsetto). To better understand the distribution of voice quality parameters in the infants’ utterances, we analyzed the phonatory settings employed in babbling. We found that the babbling of Arabic infants was more likely to feature laryngeal constriction than the babbling of English infants. Bai babbling showed the least stable incidence of laryngeal constriction, possibly reflecting the more complex use of this feature in the infants’ ambient language.