The Good Housekeeping Institute has just published a guide on “noughtiquette”, meaning etiquette in 2000 and beyond. This comes hot on the heels of a deluge of books about manners, etiquette and how to behave with decorum in given situations, from Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners, to Manners from Heaven: The Easy Way to Better Manners for All the Family, and Yes Please, Thanks!, a book of manners for children.

The hip New York designer Kate Spade has also waded in with her own volume, entitled Manners, part of a trilogy on modern living. And Lynne Truss’s new book, a call to arms entitled Talk To the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life, is out next week.

I suppose you could argue that this avalanche of books about manners was long overdue, since modern life requires a set of pointers, although that argument isn’t entirely convincing: manners don’t change that much. Besides, modern or otherwise, they are very much to do with common sense (don’t send your condolences via text message, don’t answer your wretched mobile in the middle of supper, send a note of thanks rather than an e-mail if possible).

Instead, the publication frenzy would suggest that we are at sea, that the gradual erosion of manners has left us floundering, and that we are crying out for all the help we can get on the subject of modern etiquette. Presumably this has come about because we are all aware of “the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life”, but feel powerless to do much about it.

I know I’m always banging on about children and manners, but I’ll just do it again, because it seems to be an excellent place to start. I am in a state of permanent bewilderment about this, not least because rude, uncharming children quite often belong to polite, charming parents. If we are yearning for a manners revolution, small children seem the obvious place to kick it off from.

Twenty years ago we used to laugh at children who were the product of experimental “progressive” schools or nurseries, or indeed the product of progressive, experimental parenting — no rules, no homework, no supervised diet, no chores, no bedtime, no potty training, no hairbrush, no pleases, no thank-yous. These children — everyone knew one, but probably not two — were in the minority. Now they have become the norm.

This is partly to do with the disastrous fact that many parents today are so insecure that they strive to be their small children’s “best friend”, rather than their parent, failing to grasp that you can have friends coming out of your ears, but you have only one mother and father, and that the two are not interchangeable.

Such parents’ reluctance to lay down the law has reached epidemic proportions. They cannot say “no”, because then they risk unpopularity, a fate in their eyes worse than death.

This has the direst and most tiresome consequences: you go to dinner at someone’s house and their children are rampaging about until 2am, making conversation impossible (for which privilege you are paying your babysitter £7 an hour); you take a child a present and, if you’re lucky, get a grunt instead of a thank you (thank-you notes seem to have died out altogether); you have people over for Sunday lunch and have to watch their children eating with their mouths wide open, if they deign to eat at all.

I was recently interrogated by a six-year-old about the specific ingredients, and their quantities, of a lamb stew. I was apparently the only person present that day who thought this was insane.

I know someone who cooks three different suppers for her three children every night, because they all fancy different things. Try pointing out that she’s a working mother, not a short-order chef, and you get a lecture about how the little darlings’ happiness is paramount.

This, like so much dubious parenting, has a great deal to do with working women’s guilt. I do wish someone would explain that all the good that’s done by going out to work, being intellectually stimulated and earning a living is completely undone if you’re going to come home and behave like a particularly weedy throwback. An imaginary throwback, at that: women in the 1950s didn’t cook three separate meals, or have no set bedtime, or no rules.

But what about the rest of us? Why do adults need to be told how to behave? “Don’t indulge in nude stretches or contortions in gym changing rooms”, Good Housekeeping’s guide helpfully tells us. “Don’t kiss anyone on the lips other than your partner”, or indeed “ogle other men” in front of him.

The magazine has a stolid middle-class middle-aged readership: I find the idea of it needing to be told not to bend over naked in public a bit alarming. If even the nice ladies who subscribe to Good Housekeeping need this information, what on earth does that say about the rest of us? That we are a nation of tragic oiks.

Forget not knowing which fork to use: we probably need to be reminded to use cutlery in the first place. In fact when it comes to manners the rude children have won us over: we’re all toddlers now, throwing tantrums in public for all we’re worth. We are tired and beginning to show off, as my sisters’ horrible nanny used to say before briskly dispatching them to bed. I do hope the popularity of these books heralds a revolution. It’s very much needed. oJordan appeared on page 3 of The Sun last week fully clothed. The model is considering having a breast reduction.

It used to be that “pin-ups” smiled sweetly and wore tight clothing. In the late 20th century things changed, so that we reached the point where we felt we owned the girl and her assets: see, for instance, Samantha Fox, or “Our Sam”. The girl was no longer a pin-up, but a glamour model, and so approachable that readers were encouraged to believe they stood a chance with her.

By the turn of the century the pin-up was no longer a girl-next-doorish glamour model but that useful catch-all (or nothing), a “celebrity”. At this happy stage we not only owned her bosoms for our delectation but we knew her favourite sexual position too.

Now, in the 21st century, the idea that someone’s breasts should be public property seems rather sweet and almost quaint as a concept: we’ve gone further. It’s not just the breasts that we think we own, it’s the silicone implants, too, and their proposed removal is national news. The Sun, on behalf of its readers, urges Jordan to keep the implants in. Whose implants are they, after all?

Times Recommends

• You created the job. You should do it
• A swindler with a ready maid plan
• Charming to pillory disabled Brown