We had a little night-time episode on Tuesday. They are very rare these days. You know how it is with kids. Somebody can't get to sleep and then his mind starts working overtime, next thing you know he's coming in upset halfway through A History of Violence and there goes the evening.

So we went up to bed and we had a little chat, and we had a little cuddle and, before you know it, he went off and by that time I was feeling pretty tuckered, too, so I still don't know how the film ended, but I Skyplussed it, so no big whoop. And I was thinking: wow, nobody would watch my child-rearing TV show.

House of Tiny Inconveniences, I'd call it. Based on the belief that as it is entirely your choice to bring a child into the world, what happens is entirely your responsibility, and if you can't watch your favourite shows or dine unaccompanied in Portuguese restaurants and spend your days in transit between rugby, football and hockey practice, plus indoor cricket and the sort of party schedule that would give Kate Moss a run for her money, tough.

Your choice, remember. Not theirs. If a baby could poke its head out, turn to the midwife and say: “What, these pillocks? No, thanks, love, I was hoping for one with a brain,” then I would have sympathy for the “me time” lobby. As it is, you wanted it, you look after it. This means, when it cries, do what you would do with any adult for whom you have feelings and offer a little support and comfort. Only in the world of the child are we advised to turn our backs. Correction: only in the world of children on television.

The NSPCC wants a ban on children under 5 being used in reality TV shows. What took them so long? The most high-profile television nanny is a publicity-seeking, childless matron, whose CV is currently under investigation because it contains a list of qualifications from educational bodies that have no recollection of her. Her schtick - forget that she comes under the umbrella of features and factual programming because this is showbusiness, pure and simple - is to advocate child-rearing methods from a time when children were still in workhouses. Her guru is Sir Frederic Truby King, who will have been dead 70 years on February 10 and initially took his theories from observing calves. Among other positions, he was medical superintendent of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, Dunedin, in 1889. One might say that times have changed.

Not in TV land, though. In TV land, Queen Victoria is on the throne and your kid is Oliver Twist. Faced with a disturbed infant who felt lonely and vulnerable, the Truby King disciple Claire Verity would know what to do. Leave him to cry. And don't, whatever you do, hold him. Not if the ten minutes cuddling time allowed each day had expired.

“Claire revels in her moniker of Cruella De Vil of the baby world,” it says on the Channel 4 website. She should do. It is about the only title of hers that remains undisputed. The qualifications Verity claimed to hold included a diploma in preschool practice from Aset, courses in care of multiple babies, sleeping training, emergency paediatric first aid and breast feeding from Maternity Nurse Training, a degree in business studies from York university and a diploma in childcare from Goal. Aset claimed not to offer a diploma in pre-school practice, Maternity Nurse Training said she had never enrolled in any of its courses, while York and Goal trawled their records for her name without success. When Channel 4 was told of these discrepancies on October 26 it announced an investigation that, three weeks later, is still ccontinuing, which shows a rather lax attitude to parental discipline, if you ask me.

“You don't need any qualifications to act as a maternity nurse in this country,” said Tanya Shaw, of Silver River Productions, makers of Verity's show Bringing up Baby. Precisely. This is why British children are at the mercy of wicked old bats espousing the half-baked theories of a man who also did not believe in higher education for women (though Verity does appear to be following his advice to the letter there).

Of course, being compared to a fictional character that lives in Hell Hall, drowns kittens and wishes to skin 101 Dalmatian puppies for their fur would be a deathly insult to most professional carers. That it delights Verity would perhaps indicate a greater fascination with fame and notoriety than child welfare; for a television presenter, there is no surprise in that.

For the children of mothers that take her outdated word as gospel and fail to register that this is a show, and in all forms of entertainment, bad is more interesting than good, it is a potential disaster. If television could get away with a nanny that advocated sending children up chimneys, it would. Soot Some Sense into 'Em - now that's what you call prime-time.

Last year ITV made a documentary about the extremes of parental discipline and called it I Smack and I'm Proud. The programme makers were actually attempting to depict child beating as harmful, but there was no mileage in a show called Give Them a Cuddle, bad being the real ratings winner. “No eye contact,” Verity barks to a mother. “There is absolutely no reason to pick up a baby - leave it alone, don't touch it.” On one occasion the infant is left hungry and starved of milk in an attempt to make it sleep better.

Is there not a United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that governs this? Meanwhile, Kevin Brennan, the Children's Minister, has announced new protection rules to be implemented over the next five years. Extra vetting measures will affect those who work with children, from teachers and volunteers at hobby groups to bus drivers and caretakers.

You will still be able to pose as a maternity nurse without qualifications, however. You will still be able to go on television and parrot the beliefs of a man whose opinions, thanks to modern studies of infant neurobiological development, are now discredited. In fact, it is not the under-5s that should be banned at all; it is the grown-ups.

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