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My partner Chas and I are expecting a baby in three weeks’ time, and we’re obviously as excited as we are nervous. However, all the sleepless nights, the money worries and the state-vs-private-school debates we’ll end up having with Jerome and Danielle from next door are looking like a doddle compared with the fights we’re going to have with our respective in-laws. 

The baby’s a girl (don’t tell Chas – he doesn’t know that I know!) and I’m worried about our cultural differences. My parents are Egyptian and his are of Chinese descent, so even if we can find the right school and so on, how are we going to decide whether to opt for a little vaginal mutilation (my dad’s choice) or drowning the pointless little fucker? It seems a little pointless to do both, but obviously we don’t want a huge familial ruckus so early on. 

Help! 

Nasram, Stoke-on-Trent 
 

Dear Nasram 

I tend to take the same attitude to child-rearing as I do to cooking; fusion is friction. If, for example, you try to put basil and oregano in a pad thai you won’t end up with a well-adjusted South East Asian dish with a hint of Italy: you’ll end up with a hideous green mess that’ll go straight in the bin. And you can’t put babies in the bin, not least because they’re neither paper nor cardboard, neither metal nor plastic. 

It seems to me as if you’ll have to have the fight with the in-laws. Whilst compromise might sound all well and good, all grown-up and eyes open, what you’d actually be doing is storing up trouble for later. And whilst disaffected youths can be handy on occasion they’re a horror to clean up after(!) 

This doesn’t mean that you daughter won’t grow up appreciative of her heritage, but it does mean that, whether your views or those of your husband’s family prevail, whether she grows up drowned or sexually disfigured, she’ll know that her way of being is right and that everybody else is wrong. Misguided bigotry is better than uncertainty, as the Prophet tells us! 

In faith 

Clare