MY nephew got engaged last autumn. He didn't just come to an agreement with his girlfriend and then discuss what kind of ring they should get.

Instead, he went off formally to see her father and ask for the girl's hand in marriage. Only when permission was given did the ring go on her finger.

The whole thing would have surprised me more if I hadn't heard of the same thing happening when a friend's daughter got engaged. About 30 years ago, I remember my grandfather telling me how terrifying his father-in-law was, and how nervous he'd been when he went to ask for my grandmother's hand in marriage.

I was truly thankful that all that sort of thing had been swept away, along with Victorian ideas about the place of women. It was all part of the old idea that a woman was male property - her father's until her marriage, and then her husband's. If anyone had suggested to my husband-to-be that he should ask my father's permission for our marriage, he'd have laughed outright - so, probably would my Dad.

In fact we didn't even get engaged. "I don't want to sound like a public lavatory," declared my intended, unromantically. ("Would he rather be 'vacant' then?" joked my mother.) After all, this was back in the late Sixties, when the whole world was being turned upside down, when old conventions were thrown out for ever, when there were no longer any rules or (if there were) they were only there to be broken.

We did get married - contrary to the current view of the Sixties, most couples did, eventually, though by the Seventies even that was going out of fashion. But weddings were simple and relatively cheap affairs, on the whole, keeping formality to the minimum.

Nowadays, of course, marriage is something couples may or may not get round to eventually, though if they do they seem to feel it doesn't count unless they spend thousands on The Day.

Otherwise, it's all a matter of choice. Choice, in fact is the buzzword. We're all free to pick and choose, to do things the way we want, with no rules to guide us, beyond what is legal or illegal.

Maybe that's the trouble. Maybe that's why my nephew went to ask his intended's father for permission. A life stripped of rituals is kind of bare, formless, even boring. Asking permission gives the whole thing a feeling of significance. Though what would have happened if her Dad had said no? In Victorian times, that would have been it - unless you opted for an elopement. Nowadays, I don't suppose it would make any difference at all, beyond causing a good deal of ill feeling. It certainly wouldn't have stopped my nephew getting engaged. But getting formal permission did make them feel they'd done something important, taken a step forward in their lives.

It's like that other thing that we thought we were throwing out for good in the Sixties - the old rigid childcare methods, which said babies should be fed at eight-hourly intervals and then left alone no matter how much they cried. With a huge sense of relief, my generation learned that we could take our cue from our babies, feed on demand, carry them around all day if that was what they wanted. I even heard one child-care expert on a radio phone-in advising a young mother whose baby slept all day and woke all night simply to make the household revolve around the baby's routines - the whole lot of them should go to bed during the day and stay up all night. How that fitted in with work hours and the lives of the other children, heaven knows.

Anyway, when my son and daughter-in-law were faced with the new-born Jonah, they felt their lives dissolve into chaos. From being free young people with a world of choices before them, they suddenly didn't know what to do for the best. Then - like many young parents these days - they found Gina Ford's Contented Little Baby Book, took their cue from her, and calm descended. The routines worked and life took on some sort of pattern.

It seems to me that limitless choice just doesn't work. Human beings need a certain amount of routine, however gentle. And we all need rituals too, something to give shape and meaning to our lives. So maybe that's why parents turn to authoritarian child care manuals and young couples revive ancient courtship rituals. In a world without clear rules they have to make their own, or find them where they can.