OPINION
I have been judged. At a mothers' group with my voracious newborn, known as "the jaws of doom", I hid my bottle of supplementary formula. Breast is best but sometimes you need to live to fight another day.
We have had to explain ourselves to other parents for letting our kids play rugby, for sending them to school instead of teaching them - God forbid - at home. For letting a 10-year-old watch an episode of The Sopranos. My bad. It's still presented as evidence for the prosecution when my eccentricities as a mother are raised.
I have judged. In one baby group I attended, a mum insisted on changing even the most aggressively anti-social nappy in the middle of a circle of exhausted mothers trying to eat afternoon tea. There were the parents who believed you shouldn't say "no". One threatened to never leave our home because her toddler had baled herself up behind a chair. We waited for the child to indicate she was ready to depart. Just pick her up, ignore the screaming and go.
Television has produced whole genres – Supernanny, the collected works of Nigel Latta – devoted to allowing armchair experts to feel superior to the parents of feral children named Tarquin. Now there is Three's Parental Guidance, an Australian show featuring 10 sets of parents there to judge and be judged on their parenting styles. I have been a mother for more than 40 years. I have never heard of "New French" parenting. It seems to mean raising a child who will eat escargots. There are the inevitable Tiger parents, the Attachment parents, the Nature parents who bring up five kids in nature and live in one tent. Sorry, I'm judging. There is pastor Andrew and his wife Miriam. Their style is heavy on words like "strict" and "correction". Judging again and it's only episode one.