The better class of parentage has long known the best way of putting Baby into deep and perhaps, indeed, permanent sleep is to mix whiskey in with its bottle of warm milk. Unfortunately, this has led to inordinate percentages, with the milk itself considered but an afterthought. The whiskey you feed your baby says a lot about your parenting personality, and just as there are many kinds of drunk, there are many kinds of baby. Both are unpleasant people.

Jack Daniels – A favorite of hard-partying rockstars, this is the whiskey for babies who love to wail. You’ll let the kid rip out a marathon crying jag no matter how late the hour or crowded the flight, but in the end, you will crumple under baby’s first lesson of rock ’n’ roll: if you screech loud enough, a woman will offer you her breasts. This child gets away with anything. Note that I’ve excluded drinkers of Jack & Coke from this comparison because you should never give a baby soda.

The Glenlivet – The Glenlivet is a mature scotch, fit only for the very bushiest of eyebrows. You are forcing that child to grow up too fast. You’re probably those terrible parents who teach their baby sign language the week they bring him home from the hospital, force him to play viola, and insist on one of those sports that is theoretically cheap, but requires all kinds of accessories that have very little impact on performance below the professional level — which of course you are grooming him for. Woe betide you, parents! Your child will peak early, burn a hole through the map, and resurface two years later from the wild with four tattoos and a life wisdom that will elude you until you have grandchildren. In between, all you can do is learn to listen to him. Scotland is heavy stuff, and unlike whiskey, should be administered sparingly to children.

Michter’s rye – Classic, yet quirky. You’ve obviously given the child an old name intentionally misspelled, like Rodjer, Makynzee or Madyssin.You’re the only father on the block with a handlebar mustache, and you expect your child to one day join your band. The only thing I cannot say for certain is whether you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or Portland, OR.

Jameson – You intend to give the child a traditional Catholic upbringing

The Kentucky bourbons – Sending mixed messages with your mixed grains, you have an intuitive child to whom the physical world is merely an experiment to be stripped down, taken apart, and reassembled according to its whim, at the high cost of an aversion to critical analysis. The only thing that matters to Baby is the end result. It will most likely build its own treehouse one day out of clay and smoke, but when you come to inspect the structural integrity, duck! A BB whizzes by your head to warn you that governmental oversight is not welcome here.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label – This is a favored drink of spoiled babies who already know the difference between sushi and sashimi but do not like either no matter how often you drag them to Nobu. Your baby will spend her college career deliberately crashing the cars you buy her and aggressively pursuing disposable sexual partners of a lower social class, all because right now you refuse to teach her the difference between positive and negative attention. Your best hope is to wean her down to Green Label over sincere discussions about art, and then at six months, switch her over to brandy and cigars. Only then will she be ready for you to tell her the facts about stocks.