I came in late the other night to discover my wife watching One Born Every Minute, a Channel 4 programme featuring women having babies. I sat down next to her on the sofa and it wasn’t long before my hands were clamped over my eyes. A young woman was howling in pain as her insides were twisted into a pretzel, with all manner of unspeakable muck seeping out on to the bedsheets. As her ordeal came to an end, after hour upon hour of screaming agony, the hospital room looked like a butcher’s shop that had been blown up with a cluster bomb.
‘They should show this to 14-year-old girls,’ I said to Caroline. ‘It’s the most effective form of birth control I’ve ever seen.’
She shot me a guilty look.
‘Darling?’ she said. ‘How would you feel about having another baby?’
Now, before you jump to the wrong conclusion, let me make it clear that Caroline isn’t pregnant. She was just running the idea up the flagpole. Apparently, four children under eight isn’t enough. She’s seriously thinking about a fifth. She wanted to know what I thought.
The masculine approach to a question like this is to weigh up the pros and cons in the hope of making a rational decision. Let’s start with con number one: the cost. It’s £230,000, according to the latest research. As a jobbing freelance hack, I can just about pay the mortgage and keep food on the table provided I work flat out, producing six or seven pieces a week. But another mouth to feed might be the straw that breaks the donkey’s back.
Then there’s the impact on the existing four children. They are already furious about having to share their parents with each other.
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