Marcus Berkmann: What have I done? Anyone would think I'd nailed my neighbour's cat to a tree

We've already got the Christmas present no one wants: measles. It's funny how quickly the news spreads. Within a few hours of our first suspicions, neighbours were giving me strange looks. That evening an old bag of our acquaintance pointedly cut me, and then crossed herself in self-defence – self-preservation, almost. Had I nailed her cat to a tree? No, I was the father of a child with measles. The unmentionable. The M-word.

This isn't the place to restate all the arguments for and against MMR. Many parents of small children think and speak of little else, and several I know have said they would choose it as their specialist subject on Mastermind. Millions of parents just say "sod it", take the risk, get the vaccination. Some are so fearful of the jab that the risk of complications from measles, mumps and rubella seems almost laughable by comparison. And then there are the rest of us, anxious and sweating, occupying the middle ground of hopeless indecision. Should we? Shouldn't we? Even decisive men who fire their employees for fun tend to vacillate when it comes to MMR.

Alternatively, there's family strife. I know one household in which he wanted to get it done and she didn't. He made the appointment at the doctors. She cancelled it. He shouted. She shouted louder. Doors were slammed. All sexual relations ceased. Eventually their son had measles and recovered fully, but his parents now hate each other's guts. When they get divorced, the Department of Health should be cited as co-respondent.

My partner and I, by contrast, are both feebly indecisive, to the extent that our doctors threatened to have us removed from their list unless we made up our minds. So we made an appointment for the first MMR jab, and then cancelled it, saying we needed more time to decide.

Then the word measles started being mentioned at playgroup. You ask around. And people look at you as though to say: "It is best to be immunised against the Black Death if at all possible, you know."

Mugging-up of all available literature. A rash on the face that spreads to upper arms and torso. High temperature. Strong desire of child to lie on sofa and watch Pingu videos on infinite loop. Parents sitting terrified in corner, ready to dial 999 at first sign of deterioration.

When did all this happen? For anyone over 35, measles was just one of the diseases you got as a child. If you were unlucky, there were complications. But most people weren't unlucky. The serious childhood diseases, we were told, had been obliterated by vaccination. Now we had only the easy ones to deal with – measles, mumps, chickenpox, German measles. Of these, German measles sounded by far the most worrying – the only childhood disease likely to invade Poland. But enduring these diseases was one of those rites of childhood – to be embraced rather than avoided. If someone in the neighbourhood was known to have measles or mumps, there was every chance that your mother would send you around to catch it, too. "Get it out of the way," she would say.

Coming to parenthood yourself a few decades later, you find that all has changed. German measles has a new name, and measles has a new reputation, while it's impossible for any adult who has ever read Viz to discuss mumps without at least thinking of Buster Gonads And His Unfeasibly Large Testicles. A climate of complacency has been supplanted by terror. Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything, but in the end MMR is a commercial product. It's clearly in someone's interest to promote the potential dangers of the three diseases, ie scare us all witless.

Martha had the rash. She had the temperature. She was droopy, although sufficiently compos mentis to demand ice-lollies, fromage frais, back-rubs and sweeties. After a long nap she awoke, smiled wanly and said in a small voice: "Are the Fimbles on yet?" We got her an appointment with the doctor yesterday morning. It's not measles at all. It's scarlet fever. I'm going out in a minute to tell the neighbours. Wish me luck.