SHORTLY before having my son I met my midwife. My nervousness, okay abject terror, at the impending birth must have been obvious because I remember her saying: “It’s not this you need to worry about, it’s afterwards.”

How right she was.

Mum-to-bes (especially first-timers) will tell you that pregnancy brings with it an overwhelming preoccupation with how the baby is developing and when, where and how the labour will pan out.

Your brain is so full of those questions that the nitty-gritty of what you will actually do when you have the child are pushed out completely.

So you do the ante-natal classes, practise the breathing, cross off the days until due-day and then bam – baby arrives.

Then the penny drops – you haven’t a clue what to do.

So I’m in no way against the Government’s plans for free parenting classes.

The Can Parent scheme has kicked off with trials of £100 worth of the classes offered through Boots.

If the scheme works, it will probably bring more ongoing value to parents than any ante-natal classes.

There is only one stumbling block I can see.

Who exactly will take them up?

Angst-ridden parents who seek them out because they think they need help – and are ready and willing to do something about it by going to the classes – don’t sound like bad parents to me.

Clearly they will benefit from the classes – so why not let them – but there is no denying they are the same people likely to borrow a book from the library and do just as well.

Sadly, truly bad parents – and note I say bad parents, not bad people – may not even realise they are bad parents.

They may have complex problems in their lives which a couple of classes won’t solve.

Or they may simply be passing on the habits they learned as children themselves.

Even if someone (who exactly?) points out that their parenting skills are a bit dodgy, will they want to hear it? Or even believe it?

Then you have those bad parents – who are also bad people. They are probably not open to new ideas. Full stop.

It starts to look as if you will have to force people to take the classes – but doing that will quickly make this scheme look like punishment rather than help.