I was a self-hating child, so if it’s a choice between babies and my 100-year-old mother-in-law...

We try to be above babies in this column. We don’t dislike them exactly. It’s hard to dislike a thing that hasn’t yet had time to form objectionable political opinions or the habit of reading thrillers. It’s more that we’re afraid of them. What are they thinking, what do they know about us, why that uncanny scrutiny? Or it could just be with babies as it is with children in general – if you never much enjoyed being one yourself, you aren’t going to care for any manifestation of them thereafter. And I was a self-hating baby.