After secularising marriages and funerals, there are now plans to launch a non-religious naming ceremony for babies. Lesley White is not impressed.

	Church of England baptisms have dwindled from 365,000 in 1940 to 150,000 in 1995. and criminals are getting younger by the year.	In these days of hand-on-heart and fist-on-wallet politics, bad parents are useful scapegoats. Deemed the root of all social ills, they are easy to blame, cheap to teach a lesson, and so worried about getting it wrong they cling to the new glut of "family-friendly" policies with abject gratitude. The promotion of a secular baby-naming ceremony, however, might just be an intrusion too far. Church of England baptisms have dwindled from 365,000 in 1940 to 150,000 in 1995. And criminals are getting younger by the year. The irresistible conclusion for politicians is that by snubbing the font, parents have contributed to a decline in stable family life and therefore in civic virtue. The naughty things need to be offered a substitute: a register office instead of a church, a communitarian love-in for a religious blessing, a thorough chivvying to do the right thing. But most people opt against christening for sound, not lazy or amoral, reasons, refusing the standard hypocrisy of pretending to commit their offspring to a Christian upbringing. Sometimes they have parties to celebrate the new arrival, sometimes they invite friends to be "godparents" (the best of which are always wickedly ungodly) and sometimes they just don't bother. Are such couples in need of pastoral care from jumped-up registrars calling themselves secular vicars? Are their children disadvantaged because they never uttered the suggested text from the Baby Naming Society: "We promise to try to be patient with our baby. . ." (Promise to try? In the realm of moral absolutes, what kind of cop-out is that?) Such vows are about as meaningful as the natural breathing classes they attended nine months earlier: fine in theory, useless in the hour of need.
	"we promise to try to be patient with our baby..." What kind of cop-out is that?	Except in special cases, a new parent's desire to be a good parent is a thing to be assumed, not publicly pledged. Imagine the cheek of being asked to declare, as the society suggests, "We will try to offer him unconditional love regardless of his success or failure": the insulting assumption is that affection might depend on exam results, and the unrealistic one is that we would be as proud of a daughter who discovered the Aids vaccine as one who dossed in a squat mainlining heroin all day. Long ago - and perhaps to its regret - the Church of England gave up making us feel guilty for not supporting Sunday schools and confirmation classes, and decided to be thankful for the hatched and matched customers rather than insisting on the de luxe lifetime package. How galling it must be to see the politicos and think-tankers usurping the moral high ground. For the new naming ceremonies sound less of a warm welcome to the world than 100 lines for potentially wayward parents. And what is to stop the fashion for subspiritual declarations growing: what about promising allegiance to the company while the boss weeps and passes canapés; celebrating the onset of puberty with vows of responsibility and condoms scattered like confetti; offering the new neighbours a poem on community values and keeping the noise down instead of a drink? One feels sure a beaming Tone-o-Gram could be summoned to deliver a groovily un-heavy sermon for any occasion, but let's hope not. Instead of interfering in the intimacy of babyhood, imagination and resources might be better focused on those who need help - in making adoption of unwanted children easier, submitting childminders to a vetting more rigorous than that applied to presidential bodyguards, making parents aware that handing over babies to anyone less than Mary Poppins always carries a risk, whatever Harriet Harman says.
	what about promising allegiance to the company while the boss weeps and passes canapés?	If we must pour public pledges rather than holy water on babies' heads, let people stand up and testify: "I promise not to shake my baby." And no smoking near the child, no unwarranted smacks and at the first sign of a teenage rampage, the imposition of a Straw-inspired curfew. Such vows would make not the slightest difference to the daily tragedies and accidents, but they are at least more relevant than promising not to "demand too little nor expect too much", a wording which only serves to make its authors feel that they are single-handedly turning us into nicer people. How sorry one feels for the poor old vicars whose bread and butter was once the christening of babies they would never set eyes on again and who are now facing state-funded competition. The pious and devout will still seek their blessings, of course, and the increasingly secular majority will stay at home. Or perhaps the very thought of baby naming in a dreary register office - neither sacrament nor knees-up - will send them rushing for stained-glass windows and a renunciation of evil.