But as night began to fall, the sounds of new life coming into the world were drowned out by something frightening and disturbing: London was on fire, and the streets echoed to the wails of police sirens and fire engines.
Since the riots in England, a great deal of soul-searching has taken place as to why they happened and what caused them. Was it predominantly about poverty, unemployment and the deadening effects of consumerism on social morals? Or was it family breakdown, fatherless children and the life on sink estates?
Commentators and politicians have tended to fall into left and right camps on these issues, favouring one explanation over another depending on their existing political convictions. But there was one area of political convergence, which was on the need for targeted state intervention in the lives of children from the most disadvantaged and dysfunctional families.
Early years practitioners know this debate is not new. Many work in programmes like family nurse partnerships or intervention projects that devote resources and targeted, so-called 'tough love' measures at the few really troubled families. We know these programmes can be highly effective, particularly in children's very earliest years. But they are often resisted by those who fear that they stigmatise families, drawing them out of universal services. Others worry about sinister, Matrix-style social engineering identifying potential criminals at birth, or even earlier.
When coupled with the provision of strong, universal childcare and early years services for children, such targeted programmes can bring troubled families into the mainstream, rather than exile them to the margins. It is fallacious to believe that single parenthood or absent fathers cause young people to go off the rails, just as it is to believe that marriage cures social ills. But that should not stop us integrating family services that are available to all, with interventions to turn round deeply troubled lives.