Maybe Freud was onto something when he said it was all about coitus

I’m not sure why I have children. Asking me why I made kids is like asking Deontay Wilder what happened after Fury hit him with a KO punch. “I saw his fist come towards my face. I saw the canvas rising up towards me and next thing I know my haters in the media are shoving microphones under my nose, blowing my knockout out of proportion.” Perhaps the most prominent father of psychology is Sigmund Freud.

Freud believed that everything we do is informed by our insatiable appetite for sex. But all I remember about making babies is that I was naked. Everything after that is blurry. My eyes went into their sockets then I heard that underwater humming noise, then I saw God, Satan and Mary-Magdalene dance the waltz while Wolfgang Mozart conducted the choir of Seraphims.

Nine months later I was handed a screaming, pink reptilian blob and told, “Congratulations! You’re a father.”

Don’t accuse me of sounding like a misogynist who believes that men are the victims of evil women who subject them to unwanted children. You couldn’t be farther from the truth. Besides, now that I have been “subjected” to these humans, I’d make the same decisions again, given the four opportunities.

My children are more than impressive — they’re amazing human beings, their paternity notwithstanding. I Nevertheless, I’ve argued for two decades that the Department of Social Services (DSD) should set up a Parenthood Licensing Bureau.

No-one should be allowed to procreate until they’ve satisfied some basic tests. As things stand, being born with ovaries and testes is the only criteria. If a spy camcorder were installed in every household, Child Protection Services would remove roughly 99.99% of all children from parents and guardians.

You’re probably thinking; “That’s taking an absurd thought to preposterous levels!” But is it?

I meet your children each time I leave my house to fetch my own poorly parented children from school, to Planet Fitness, to the mall and to all these “socials” you invite our children to. Why does anyone agree to send any 14-yearold to a poorly lit room with other teenagers?

Especially when all the music they listen to is from a bunch of Korean teenagers singing about oral sex. I’m scared of everyone else’s children more than I’m afraid of mine.

If you eavesdropped on the advice I’ve given to my kids throughout their lives, you’d probably have downloaded the Z666 form to report child abuse to DSD. One time I was serving my last-born supper and he insisted on a raw chilli to “chase” his food like I, the typical Durbanite, usually did. He was three at the time but I remember thinking, “Better now than later.” As I watched his red, screaming face react to the chilli, blobs of earwax falling out his ears, I knew I’d committed a grave error.

We’ve all watched Home Alone, that flick where an entire family forgot the last-born at home while traveling to a family vacation. I couldn’t understand how an entire family forget their own child at home.

Fast forward 30 years and I can empathise. I, too, have “forgotten” my offspring. Picking them up from after-care, from sports events, from sleepovers.

There’s something about driving into an empty sports field with your kid cutting a lonely figure in cricket all-whites an hour after everyone’s else has left that tells you you’re a useless excuse for a parent.

My second-born is turning 18 soon. When his elder brother turned 21, I took him to a house of ill repute on the outskirts of Joburg. I figured it was my duty to expose him to the seedy part of life before he was corrupted by his peer group.

I’ve since discovered that I was two years too late. I have no way of knowing whether this is a good idea or whether I’m committing my child to a life that leads directly to the fires of Hades.

I’ll take all e-mailed advice seriously.

Freud believed that everything we do is informed by our insatiable appetite for sex. But all I remember about making babies is that I was naked.