Whilst I may mock such antics, the arrival of our own little princes and princesses is nevertheless a subject worthy of discussion. Rearing children is more expensive than ever, as the leaflet for something called a 'Baby Bond' in the new parent pack dished out by the NHS when my kids were born didn't hesitate to remind me.
Of course, new parents are not well known for thinking particularly rationally - I remember when my twins arrived I barely had any idea what to do with them, let alone how to begin planning their financial affairs for the next two decades (and probably more if the idea of the 'jilted' generation of stay-at-home offspring has any truth to it). All I knew was that I needed to start squirreling some cash away for a double dose of university fees, housing deposits and first cars, so I signed up.
What a mistake. I cannot be more emphatic when I say that this investment has proved to be the worst investment I could possibly have made. My kids were born at the post dot com market nadir, since which time the FTSE 100 has doubled - this 'with profits' plan, meanwhile, has netted me a grand total of £177 in bonuses over a decade, including zero in 2012 when the FTSE All-share rose 8 per cent.
While I believe in the concept of caveat emptor, I still think the way this product was marketed was cynical - preying on vulnerable people, whose judgement is clouded by lack of sleep and general trepidation. I am genuinely shocked when, having since spent a decade in the industry and knowing how these products are sold, I look back at the marketing literature - no mention of charges, some extraordinary projections of what I might expect to get back in 17 years of saving (including nearly £4,500 in bonuses - still some way to go there, then), not to mention an implicit endorsement from the NHS. As a final insult, the £40 of Mothercare vouchers they promised never arrived either.
As a rule of thumb, financial products marketed specifically for children are often bad ones, and you should save for your kids in exactly the same way you'd save for yourself. Yet the industry continues to play this trick, because it knows that tugging at the heartstrings of parental duty combined with a lack of financial knowledge lulls people into buying them. It's time this right royal rip off was put to the sword.
