There has been much media interest in the marriage break-up of broadcaster Anne Diamond and her husband, television producer Mike Hollingsworth, particularly since it emerged that the cause of the split was Anne's insistence on allowing her four sons, aged three to 11, to share the marital bed every night. Since then we have been inundated with articles by female feature-page journalists - hordes of whom are kept on standby in secure areas and unleashed only for stories of such global significance - on the rights and wrongs, advantages and disadvantages, consequences and side-effects, inter national implications, diplomatic stand-offs, tectonic plate alterations, ozone layer changes and extraterrestrial confrontations that can result when a small child first makes its desperate, fearful, determined, tiny-footed patter towards the marital chamber.
Is it "advisable" to let the brats in? - you are asked. Is it healthy? Are you merely satisfying your own needs? Do you secretly dislike your offspring? Why this demand for personal space? Whose fault is it? Have you a drink problem? Are you covering up sexual inadequacy, fear of the dark, financial failure, complete emotional crippledom and a pathetic tennis volley? What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?
Thus do the media tap into our collective middle class guilt. The Times was the first to bring up the crucial issue of whether or not a family has "a communal sleeping policy". A child clinical psychologist was hauled in to point out the full horror of being without such an important document: "If the whole family is in agreement with a communal sleeping policy, there isn't a problem, but difficulties arise when the parents have differing views."
Right, off with you to your insurance agent, get a quote on a decent communal sleeping policy, read the small print, hammer out an agreement, spread the premiums over the year, it's well worth it.
But the psychologist neglected to mention the differing views of the children, not to mention the difficulties of explaining to a three-year-old what a differing view is, or indeed explaining any notion in conflict with a three-year-old's philosophy of want, get, give, go, now. "Children," continued this psychologist, "need to see their parents working together over issues. So if one partner doesn't want the children in bed, this creates a conflict which the children become aware of." Yes, with the usual result that they just kick him out.
Naturally this plethora of newspaper articles has fully informed us of the current practice in other cultures. By now we know that the Fokagutu tribe in central Borneo arranges its bedrooms in an unusual inter-connecting circular formation, so that when the tremor of bamboo curtains in the dark of night indicates the movement of offspring, the parents slip silently around to occupy their newly-deserted children's beds.
In contrast, the Okiwashto people of New Guinea swap beds with their neighbours at irregular intervals, thus confusing their wandering children, who soon learn that no move is good move. The traditional Amish communities of Maine and Vermont gently chain their offspring to their beds until the age of 10. The fun-loving Order of the Giant Hibiscus, a middle-of-the-road neo-pagan sect in San Bernardino, welcomes juvenile nocturnal wanderers to the marital bedroom with wild hedonistic parties which continue until morning. The Family Revivalists of Alabama, on the other hand, discourage nightly visitations by means of grizzly-bear traps left at the marital bedroom door.
We are more civilised over here, but still confused. Fortunately the Pope's latest encyclical has arrived just in time to enlighten us. Entitled Fides et Ratio, after the delightful four-year-old Neapolitan twins who inspired it, the encyclical has lessons for us all - believers and non-believers, the children of darkness as well as the children of light. But it is the children of darkness in particular who are urged to consider the fundamental questions which pervade human life: "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? And why?"
The correct answers are: "I am a small child. I have come from my own room. I am going to Mummy and Daddy's room. It's 3.45 a.m. and there's bugger-all they can do about it."
