BABIES are turning into expensive little fashion victims almost before the cord is cut. And it's not just the fault of Posh and Becks.

Parents are being pressurised into spending far too much on their babies, says a book due out this month. It has all developed into "huge hysteria" says Sian Morrisey, author of the Which? Guide to baby Products. "Parents or prospective parents are vulnerable and the baby products market exploits this. "In other words, as soon as we become parents we go goo-goo and ga-ga and lose all common sense, somewhere between Mothercare and Baby Gap.

The average parent apparently now spends £1,000 to kit out a nursery and another £2.5000 on products in the first two years. Gosh, no wonder more mothers are having to go back to work so soon.

How much balloon wallpaper and how many baby wipes does one small person need? Not to mention matching cot bumpers, nappy sacks and designer pushchairs that cost about as much as a teenager's car.

Dolls used to be substitute babies for small girls to practise on. Now babies are surrogate dolls for big girls to dress in as many different outfits as they can.

And it just takes the Beckhams to appear with Brooklyn, or Madonna with Lourdes and Rocco to set off another craze. Tiny babies were always small anonymous bundles but now they've been turned into fashion accessories.

Look, the brilliant thing about small babies is that couldn't care less what they wear as long as it's warm and comfortable. They don't care if it's a designer label, or something that's been handed down through about a dozen other babies first. They don't even notice if their clothes have come from a designer boutique or the playgroup jumble sale. Let's face it - you're spending all that money for your sake not theirs, so don't kid yourself.

And make the most of it.

All too soon, when adolescence kicks in - at about seven years old these days - children can recognise a label at a hundred paces. That's when they'll start putting the pressure on.

And by the time they hit their teens they'll probably insist that you wear the right labels too, before they condescend to walk down the street with you.

Then you will be bullied, blackmailed and pressurised into spending every penny they can wheedle out of you. So while your baby is happily too young to notice his clothes or surroundings, hang on to your cash.

You'll need it soon enough...

DESPITE being small, a very determined woman has become the first to be awarded the green beret of the marines, after undergoing exhausting and gruelling challenges and just refusing to give up. A few days later, Caroline Hamilton and Ann Daniels became the first all-female expedition to trek to both the north and south poles - despite frostbite and having to walk an extra few hundred miles to the North Pole because of appalling weather conditions.

By any standard, these are great achievements for women. We've come a long way. But we cannot afford to be smug.

Women still earn a lot less than men - 18 per cent less for full time workers, much worse for part-timers, says a new report by the Equal Opportunities Commission this week.

The route to the North Pole was blocked by huge ice ridges, plunging chasms, melting ice floes, blizzards and the freezing Arctic Ocean.

Compared with the route to equal pay, it seems a doddle.

HOORAY! From this week the Cornmill Centre in Darlington is to be a non-smoking zone. This is great news. Often the smell of smoke trapped in shopping malls can be, literally, sickening.

Now a lot more of us might be tempted to spend a bit more time - and money - in the fresher air of the Cornmill.

Published: 04/06/2002