Coming home from Edinburgh in the car, Daughter Number Two is giving us a resume of the latest ethics discussions at school.

Coming home from Edinburgh in the car, Daughter Number Two is giving us a resume of the latest ethics discussions at school. These include the death penalty and the morality of war.

??I don??t think the death penalty is right because if you kill someone then you have to be killed. That means whoever does the execution should be killed. And then whoever kills them should be killed and before you know it everyone will have been killed.??

??I??m not sure that??s how it works,?? I suggest.

??No. I know. But why is it OK for executioners to kill people and not be killed???

??I??m with you,?? I say. ??Isn??t it good that we don??t have a death penalty here???

??Yes. Can I get a chippie for tea, by the way??? [1]

??We will see.??

There??s a pause. Not a long pause. Daughter Number Two doesn??t do long pauses.

??And another thing. Rory [2] at school was saying that if he was in the army he would kill boys but he wouldn??t kill girls. I told him that was sexist.??

After I stop laughing I think that through. Frankly, I am not sure how I even begin to disentangle it.

Is the fact that I believe that Rory is showing a modicum of moral judgement suggest that I am sexist too?

Still, I like the idea that my daughters are little Lena Dunhams in training. I want them to recognise that they are quite as capable as any man. In fact, if they take the example of their parents as their model, probably more capable. Actually, scratch that. Definitely more capable.

To this end I??ve been thinking about buying Daughter Number One Caitlin Moran??s book How To Build A Girl but there??s the problem of its sex scenes.Well, it??s a problem for me.

J thinks that society has gone backwards in the gender equality stakes. Back in the eighties pop stars looked like Bananarama [3], not Beyonce. Stroppy, sassy, self-possessed girls who didn??t feel the need to flash their gussets at every passing camera.

There was Madonna, I suppose. But then there was always an element of irony about her ??Boy Toy?? belt buckle and lace basques, wasn??t there? I certainly never ever doubted that Madge could handle herself.

But that was then. You worry that girls have it harder now. That there is some troll out there just waiting to ruin their day. All I can do is encourage them to stand up for themselves and do what I can to help. So, she gets a chippie.

It was never really in doubt.

[1]The rest of us had already eaten.

[2] All names have been changed and all that.

[3] Siobhan was always my favourite but in saying so I accept that I may be disproving my own point.