Sure, there are problems, outmarriage – and note I do not say “intermarriage” – being the major one. The needy babies have developed into interesting and kind young men who are both independent and affectionate.If you have children, you have to be prepared to put in night duty for the first few years in order to reap huge benefits later.JEHANE MARKHAMLondon NW5. As a mother of three, the eldest of whom is now 17, I certainly “failed” to teach my children to sleep when they were babies. I fed them all on demand and each baby slept between us in our big family bed until they were ready to move on to their own beds around about the age of four.Nights were broken, but strangely enough this was not the signal of long- term behavioural problems – in fact quite the reverse. Many parents, myself and my partner included, have moved on from this quasi-Victorian attitude, which hardly credits the baby with having more intelligence than an animal, to another level altogether.
Rather than training our babies to sleep, we tried to respond to the deepest human needs, which babies bring forth within us if we are lucky enough to be parents. Surely it is the right of parents to determine how their children are raised.

The last thing parents need is yet more “advice” from the concerned on how to do something that has been taken for granted since the beginning of time – parenting. Men who feel “traumatised” by the loss of a couple of square inches of skin obviously have a very shallow perspective on what constitutes a real problem in life.
MISCHA MOSELLEHong Kong. Sir. Hold the front page! According to a recent study, 90 per cent of the world’s population are male.

This is based on a survey of 24 people in my office IT department, the same number surveyed in your headline article on passive smoking

MIKE HANSEN
London NW6. Sir: Roger Dobson’s article, “How to turn nightmares into sleeping beauties” (29 September) infuriated me with its half-baked “medical” theories such as “Night waking and settling problems are the seeds of potential long-term behavioural problems in the child” and “Sleep is a learnt behaviour and many parents fail to teach it properly.”

These are the same old tired theories that have been put forward for twenty years. Sir: Mr Blair tells us it is a choice between the Labour government we have got and the Tories. (Or was it the other way round?) Only two options? Whatever happened to the “third way”?

JOHN NICHOLSON
Convener, Greater Manchester Socialist AllianceManchester.

Sir: As one who met the knife at the age of eight days, I find the debate over circumcision just a little sterile. She may have thought my purchase of salmon was farmed, and was determined to liberate it.Counsel: How can you liberate a piece of dead salmon ?Wishart: Don’t ask me Ask Mrs Willoughby.The case continues.. And your fifth reason?Judge: Look, wouldn’t it be simpler to ask Mrs Willoughby why she took the trolley?Counsel: And so I will in due course, my Lord, but I think Mrs Wishart should complete her payment at the legal check-out first, so to speak.Judge: Very nicely put.Counsel: So, Mrs Wishart, a fifth reason?Wishart: It is quite possible that Mrs Willoughby is one of these animal rights activists and disapproves of salmon farming. Supermarkets like to reorganise the placing of their shelves from time to time so that regular customers can no longer find produce in the expected place.