Kent Messenger columnist Steve Constable with his own look at the world

I WOULD have been all right in China. Just one, solitary child, who has grown up to play a small but useful role in the commerce of fresh produce.

My reproductive restraint would also earn the approval of Jonathon Porritt, notable Friend of the Earth who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, who was quoted in the newspapers as suggesting: “Having more than two children is irresponsible.”

It’s been a big few weeks for kids, what with the Good Childhood Inquiry condemning our national parenting, with broken families, bad eating, drug and alcohol abuse and, yes, just too many babies, all contributing to the misery of sproglet society.

And it was no surprise that a survey by the parents’ networking website Mumsnet discovered that 85 per cent of respondents confessed to bribing children to stop bad behaviour and almost as many admitted saying “no” – and then backing down.

They do things differently in America, where fertility treatment produced octuplets for a single mother, despite her having six children already.

Her initial, overwhelming desire for anonymity turned within 24 hours into a reported demand for $2 million for an interview with Oprah Winfrey, which rather humbles our middle-class grumbles about “benefit babies” we like to believe are borne by the impoverished in this country in the hope of securing council accommodation.

Nor have our hard-pressed grannies and grandpas too much babysitting to complain about, given that the octuplets’ grandfather said he intended to help the family finances by returning to work as a driver – in Iraq.

I might have agreed with Jonathon Porritt, until I remembered my own brother’s six children, who seem a civilised, and potentially productive and creative clan (imagine the cost of bribing – and the challenge of saying “no” to – that lot).

There does not appear to have been too much mugging and stabbing so far, anyway, but perhaps the best measure of how well we’ve both brought them all up lies a little way ahead – when we see how good they are as parents.