Why bother to save for your baby?

There is a popular book for new parents called What to Expect the First Year by Arlene Eisenberg. In the chapter on what to expect during the third month there is a list of things your baby should be able to do. One of these is ‘pay attention to a raisin or other very small object’. This seems innocuous but it is the exactly the sort of thing that induces panic in a first-time parent. Scores of sleep-deprived novices, keen to make sure their little ones are developing as they should, routinely spend hours trying to persuade reluctant babies to concentrate on raisins when they would much rather be sucking their fingers or staring at ceiling lights.

Being a new parent is a worrying business, and new worries are constantly added to the list. For me, last week was raisins; this week is the Child Trust Fund. The promised £250 certificate for our new baby girl has just arrived from Gordon Brown, along with a booklet encouraging us to invest it and top it up to the maximum £1,200 a year so that it grows to a worthwhile sum by the time our daughter is 18.